The RICOMET 2019 art exhibition The Promised Land – visual poetics of preservation and recovery – information on the artists

The RICOMET 2019 art exhibition

The Promised Land

> visual poetics of preservation and recovery <

with

Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway Sergii Mirnyi Akagi Shuji

Arie van ’t Riet

Barcelona Biomedical Research Park, Barcelona, 1 – 3 July 2019

Opening: Monday 1 July 2019, 12h30 Introduction by Gaston Meskens, SCK•CEN & Ghent University

information on the artists

This exhibition has received funding from the CONCERT project,

within the EURATOM research and training programme 2014-2018 under grant agreement No 662287.

The RICOMET 2019 art exhibition The Promised Land – visual poetics of preservation and recovery – information on the artists

Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway Kuannersuit ; Kvanefjeld (2016) is a film that portrays a Greenland divided on the issue of uranium mining at Kvanefjeld. Surrounded by spectacular ice fjords and sheep grazing country, this is a UNESCO world heritage listed cultural landscape. However many Greenlanders see the exploitation of Greenland’s uranium and mineral reserves in the area as the only route to an independent, de-colonised future. The film explores the difficult decisions and trade-offs faced by an indigenous culture seeking to escape a colonial past and define its own identity in a globalised world. It explores the conflicting issues of progress, inclusive and informed decision-making and the vast unknown consequences of siting an open pit uranium mine next to a town and Greenland’s only food producing land regions. The Kvanefjeld mine represents a pivotal moment for Greenland, as short term foreign mining investments may jeopardize the country’s dream of a long-term sustainable future. The Kvanefjeld mine may radically impact on the economic, social and cultural fabric and entire sense of identity of the Inuit population. Autogena and Portway have since further explored some of the issues raised by the film. They are currently working with environmental, academic, national and international agencies to establish a community monitoring programme to enable the Kvanefjeld community to manage radiation monitoring in their own environment. This process could bring the community an increased scientific and environmental understanding and perception of risks involved - thereby enabling them to participate in democratic processes, such as the stakeholder consultation in connection with the establishment of the Kvanefjeld mine. Lise Autogena is a Danish-born artist and Professor of Cross-Disciplinary Art at Sheffield Hallam University working in collaboration with UK artist, programmer and technologist Joshua Portway for the past thirty years. Link to the film: https://vimeo.com/214697146 / Website: www.autogena.org Contact: Lise Autogena, L.Autogena@shu.ac.uk Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway – Kuannersuit ; Kvanefjeld (2016) – film still

The RICOMET 2019 art exhibition The Promised Land – visual poetics of preservation and recovery – information on the artists

Sergii Mirnyi “ … The Chernobyl liquidators were the civil and military personnel who were conscripted to deal with consequences of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union on the site of the event. The liquidators are widely credited with limiting both the immediate and long-term damage from the disaster. Surviving liquidators are qualified for significant social benefits due to their veteran status. Many liquidators were praised as heroes by the Soviet government and the press, while some struggled for years to have their participation officially recognized …” (source: Wikipedia ‘Chernobyl liquidators’) Sergii Mirnyi worked as a liquidator in the direct aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. After the demobilization from Chernobyl, he returned to his civil lab and continued working as a physical chemist. However ‘strangeness, oddness and inexplicability’ of what he witnessed in Chernobyl kept intriguing and haunting him. Therefore, in order ‘to resolve the enigma’ and to make to sense of the Chernobyl experience, he went back to university and obtained an MSc in Environmental Sciences and Policy and did furthers studies in social sciences and humanities. With this knowledge, Sergii Mirnyi began to study the actual health state of the Chernobyl liquidators (called ‘mitigation workers’) and the resulting book Chernobyl Liquidators' Health as a Psycho-Social Trauma laid the foundation for a totally different perception of contemporary disasters, their hazards and mitigation. Since then, he presented papers and keynote lectures at many international conferences in Europe, the USA and Japan, and he initiated and organized an interdisciplinary conference of a new kind, called Chornobyl, etc.: Coping with Disasters. In 2009, the leading Russian intellectual publishing house Novoje Literaturnoye Obozreniye (New Literary Review) published his generalizing work Chornobyl as info-trauma in an international collective volume Travma: punkty (Trauma: Items). (adapted from http://chernobyl-tour.com/sergii_mirnyi_en.html). Based on his experiences, Sergii Mirnyi also founded the Chornobyl Tour® and works in that context as scientific advisor and tour-designer. More info on the tour is at http://chernobyl-tour.com/sergii_mirnyi_en.html The book Chernobyl Liquidators' Health as a Psycho-Social Trauma is partly published online at http://www.mirnyi.arwis.com/book_2/contents_he_e.html Meanwhile, Sergii Mirnyi also published the novels Worse Than Radiation and Chernobyl comedy. In his own words: About ‘Worse Than Radiation’: “ … This documentary novel and short stories convey my most immediate feelings and

impressions from working inside the Chernobyl zone …” About ‘Chernobyl Comedy’: “ … My so-far-final piece of literature - the fiction novel/screenplay ‘Chernobyl Comedy’ -

is a demonstration of how to overcome both cognitive and psychological-trauma challenges of the Chernobyl Disaster …”

More about Sergii Mirnyi: http://chernobyl-tour.com/sergii_mirnyi_en.html Contact: Sergii Mirnyi, s.mirnyi@gmail.com Sergii Mirnyi / book covers

The RICOMET 2019 art exhibition The Promised Land – visual poetics of preservation and recovery – information on the artists

Akagi Shuji Akagi Shuji (1967) was born in Fukushima, Japan, and obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Tsukuba in 1989. He lives in Fukushima-city and works there as a senior high school art teacher since 1991. While working as a teacher, he started to record the daily life of Fukushima-city after the nuclear disaster caused by the earthquake in March 2011. He publishes his observations through text, manga and photography and has meanwhile shot over 500,000 pictures of what could be called the first radioactive contamination of an urban region in human history. In his work, he is especially interested in the divergence of the people’s evaluation of the nuclear contamination and focuses on the phenomenon that, apparently, the majority of the inhabitants try to give the impression that the rehabilitation of the city and the region is in progress. As artist, he is active on twitter and receives a lot of response. He published the photo-book Fukushima Traces, 2011-2013 in 2015 and already presented his work in many exhibitions and lectures. Selection of exhibitions: Exhibition "Transmission", 2014, Tokyo "Don't follow the Wind", 2015, Fukushima "Tanesashi Deconta", 2016, Hachinohe "Perpetual Uncertainty", 2016, Umea, Sweden "Perpetual Uncertainty", 2017, Hasselt, Belgium More info about the book Fukushima Traces, 2011-2013: http://www.osiris.co.jp/e/ft_e.html

Contact: 赤城修司 akagishuji@gmail.com, https://twitter.com/akagishuji

Akagi Shuji – photo of the platform of a small station in Fukushima city (inside the lower green covers is contaminated soil)

The RICOMET 2019 art exhibition The Promised Land – visual poetics of preservation and recovery – information on the artists

Arie van ’t Riet Arie van ’t Riet is an artist based in The Netherlands who uses X-ray technology to create ‘bioramas’ (x-ray portraits) of animals and plants in his studio. He has a masters degree in Applied Physics from the Delft University of Technology and completed a PhD at the University of Utrecht on the treatment of prostatic cancer using Iodine-125 seeds. In his own words: “… As a child, I was fascinated by biology and aspects of physics such as electricity and magnetism. I was very lucky that my physics lessons at school were taught by a very enthusiastic teacher who stimulated my interest strongly. I was especially interested in nuclear physics …” “… In the late 1990s, while teaching radiation physics and radiation safety to radiographers and physicians as part of the hospital’s programme, I found that even very thin objects (such as flowers) can be imaged when using very low energy X-rays. After a few years, I started to colour some of these X-ray images, and people found them interesting. I got my own licensed X-ray studio in 2007 and, after retiring from the hospital in 2012, I have been working full-time creating “bioramas” – nature scenes involving flowers, plants and animals. I was inspired by the unbelievable beauty of nature, and became aware of its wonderful complexity …” Source: https://www.iop.org/careers/working-life/profiles/page_71572.html Arie van ‘t Riet exhibited his 3D X-ray images at the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam (the works had to be observed through a View-Master). His photographs were also included in a recent Dutch children’s book titled Binnenstebinnen, published by Gottmer, Haarlem. Contact: vantrietarie@gmail.com Arie van ‘t Riet – x-ray “Veiled (Yemen) chameleon climbing a Hanging begonia plant”