The multimedia installation seeks to capture the complex intertwining between uranium mining, resource conversion to nuclear energy, and strategies for deciphering and making visible invisible or even closed phenomena in hard-to-access scientific knowledge, practice, and discourse.
The cloud chamber at the center of this work provides a first glimpse of the invisibility of phenomena that surround us: namely, the activity of radioactive particles from the cosmos (or from radioactive earth sources) that permeate our bodies without our knowing it. As an analog apparatus that reveals abstract lines, Cloud Chamber presents us with the difficult task of deciphering the unknown language of an invisible atomic dimension endowed with an abstract geometric aesthetic. The photograms taken collectively in a uranium mine during a trip to Wismut with the "Red Forest" seminar, with objects and resources found in the tunnels, reveal another level of this unveiling of the visible. As fractal entities, they illustrate the close connection between particular physical contact and the grasping of phenomena that would otherwise approach our understanding only in abstract ways.
The video and sound installations support this perceptual approach: how do resource extraction, visualization, and abstraction intertwine in our attempt to understand the multiple intricacies of the nuclear industry?
Students: Dario Schmid, Lukas Klein, Pierre-Eric Baumann, Wen Liu
Developed in the seminar "Red Forest, for example" by Susanne Kriemann