For the first time ever, an all-star team of artists, curators, and nuclear scientists came together in Chicago to energize the nuclear disarmament debate. “It’s the most pressing crisis of our generation,” said Rachel Bronson, President of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “Climate change might wipe us out in a few decades, but nuclear weapons could wipe us out tomorrow.”
Over the year 2021, a group of research fellows at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago investigated ways to use art and tech to address the threat of nuclear arms. Now, during the first week in August, their Start a Reaction project carried out media and performance workshops with youth from the Chicago Area Peace Action group, nuclear non-proliferation leaders, and artists.
Start a Reaction culminated in a one-day-only exhibition on August 7 in Hyde Park. It featured performances by Japanese choreographer and MacArthur genius grant winner Eiko Otake, who performed a new work that interweaved the 1945 story with the perils of today called They did not hesitate. In addition, a site-specific, augmented reality environment, How do we trouble time? by Judd Morrissey and Taylor Shuck with Abraham Avnisan was also commissioned. It took the audience on a poetic quantum journey into time and space.
The event took place on South Ellis Avenue on the UChicago campus, the location of the world’s first nuclear reactor, a site first commemorated in 1967 with a public work by British sculptor Henry Moore who named it Atom Piece (Peace), but the commissioners renamed Nuclear Energy.
They did not hesitate by Eiko Otake
Photo credit: Carter Wright
How do we trouble time? by Judd Morrissey and Taylor Shuck with Abraham Avnisan
Photo Credit: Carter Wright
How do we trouble time? by Judd Morrissey and Taylor Shuck with Abraham Avnisan
How do we trouble time? by Judd Morrissey and Taylor Shuck with Abraham Avnisan
How do we trouble time? by Judd Morrissey and Taylor Shuck with Abraham Avnisan
How do we trouble time? by Judd Morrissey and Taylor Shuck with Abraham Avnisan
Complimenting the performances is a commissioned Instagram-based artwork by Maysam Al-Ani, titled Atomic Chrysalis, which utilizes an interactive AR filter to explore topics of metamorphosis and emergence, inspired by the symbols surrounding the narrative of nonproliferation. Users can engage with Start a Reaction and find more information about Atomic Chrysalis on Instagram at @startareaction.
Atomic Chrysalis by Maysam Al-Ani
Atomic Chrysalis by Maysam Al-Ani
Atomic Chrysalis by Maysam Al-Ani
Atomic Chrysalis by Maysam Al-Ani
Atomic Chrysalis by Maysam Al-Ani
An accompanying website, startareaction.org, supplements the event by modeling an artistic response to the issue of nuclear nonproliferation and presenting a “toolkit” for activists who are interested in staging similar interventions in the disarmament space.
Start a Reaction is a project of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Institute for Curatorial Research and Practice (ICRP), in collaboration with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and in partnership with Pedro Reyes’s Amnesia Atomica. It is supported by a grant from the Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation.
Past Shadow, Future Light by Hugo Juarez
Past Shadow, Future Light by Hugo Juarez
Past Shadow, Future Light by Hugo Juarez
