Pieces of the Nuclear Chain in East and Central Europe
The history of the nuclear industry starts in the 20th century. “Nukleare Pforten/ Nuclear Gates” puts the focus on the historical sites of the nuclear industry away from the “core” – the nuclear power plant, as sociologist Gabrielle Hecht describes it. For this project, I was moving parallel to the timeline on the trail of events: I visited the former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin Dahlem (now the Hahn-Meitner-Bau of the FU Berlin) where nuclear fission was discovered, explored Germany’s first nuclear power plant Rheinsberg in the process of deconstruction, the former largest Soviet airport in Balitkum, Raadi, a district of Tartu along with the (atomic) bomb storages in Maramaa (and Luunja), visited the also ESSR closed town of Sillamäe with a uranium processing plant directly at the Baltic Sea, portrayed the Ralsko military complex in today’s Czech Republic, which includes not only the Stráž pod Ralskem uranium mining area, but also the former Mimoň military training area with an alternative landing strip for the Soviet space shuttle, and explored the GDR’s Morsleben repository for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste. However, I am not creating a series of features that serve primarily informative purposes; rather, the aim is to conceive an auditory journey with artistic means that focuses essentially on current and historical contexts of this branch of industry. Having lived in a nuclear site for a long time myself, I know how counterproductive a one-sided, blatant representation can be, as it stigmatises areas and their inhabitants. Artistic representation is ambiguous and can also reconcile paradoxical realities, so it is excellently placed to address this difficult but interesting subject. In my experience, the relics of the nuclear age are either avoided in the public debate or dealt with in a very fearful way. Yet successful communication about issues and risks at current and former nuclear industry sites is essential. Even across Europe, it affects many more areas than it is generally known and will affect many more in the future – the search for a final repository as a participatory process in Germany is in full swing, for example – the rolling train of nuclear history with its burden of eternity can only be stopped slowly and will remain as a nuclear legacy for future generations for a long time to come. When I drafted this project in the summer of 2021, it was not foreseeable (to me) that military development would experience such topicality: since February 2022, nuclear weapons in various forms have again been strategically applied in Europe. This makes it all the more important to follow the continuity of these weapons and all pieces of the nuclear chain.

Nuclear history, magic and everyday life
Nuclear history is associated with many myths and misunderstandings. Although uranium has long become part of almost all cultures, it tends to appear to us as a distant, obscure element. This perspective may stem from the narrative that the atomic bomb in particular was presented as the unthinkable. Numerous authors emphasize the magical connotation that repeatedly appears in connection with nuclear power: Ernst Bloch already stated that the “radiation industry” with its practical application of quantum theory and relativity theory brings paradoxes to light “that not only surpass every vision of a novel, but almost surpass the model books of ancient magic”. So it is not surprising that apocalypse and nuclear power are also closely linked. Many associations with nuclear power are also linked to “remote” places. My project is intended to point to the presence of the nuclear complex in our surroundings and thus establish a connection to our living world – stations of nuclear history can also be found in the immediate vicinity without us always knowing about it.
Uranium is not only a techno-chemical element anymore, it has become a cultural one as well, just rather in a blind spot.

An artistic research project
For „Nuclear Gates“, I will visit nuclear sites in Germany and Eastern Europe and develop a series of associative audio collages from these trips, consisting of field recordings, sonifications, interviews, found footage and texts. These can be broadcast on the radio, published as a podcast or conceived as an exhibition contribution. For each “gateway” I will develop a kind of artistic “proof” that portrays the experiences made. The (im)possibility of sensual perception, which Ullrich Beck has called the “expropriation of the senses”, will play an essential role. I will work on the following research questions: Are there indications of the specificity of places, and if so, which ones? Do people who live in the immediate vicinity engage with them and if so, how? Is it possible to develop an acoustic atomic semiotics (based on Human Task Force Interference) by collecting the experience of such different places?

This project was funded by a grant awarded by the Cultural Foundation of the Federal State of Saxony (KdFS) 2022