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In the midst of the current energy crisis, how do we think about nuclear energy and the search for energy alternatives? Can we imagine energy futures not only without fossil fuel, but also beyond the nuclear? And how do we deal with high-level radioactive waste?
Image gallery
KEY VISUAL SALZ. TON. GRANIT.
Germany and Hungary have chosen radically different paths concerning nuclear energy. While Germany completed its nuclear exit in 2023, Hungary plans to expand its nuclear capacity with the heavily debated PAKS II reactor. Despite these differences, both countries are challenged by the ongoing search for final repositories for their high-level radioactive waste, which has to be found within their national borders. Globally too, this is an unresolved issue, as most countries have yet to create safe storage for this high-risk by-product of energy production.
Inspired by the three types of rock—salt, clay, and granite—that are considered suitable ‘containers’ for nuclear waste storage, SALT. CLAY. ROCK. takes a situated and site-specific approach to artistic research. Artists are invited to engage with different places and communities across Germany and Hungary—from tiny villages to industrialized small towns—that host nuclear infrastructures (such as uranium mines, power plants, and waste repositories), or that have been important sites of anti-nuclear resistance. These sites are often in relatively remote locations on the peripheries of public attention, yet important to the local communities living there who are also the ones most directly impacted by this uneasy future heritage. SALT. CLAY. ROCK. sets out to inquire how artistic research can approach people’s experiences, what perspectives it can offer, and how it can engage trans-locally with very different places, people, and situations.
In the past months the project’s curators and artists have visited nuclear power plant training centers, waste repositories’ hi-tech multimedia ‘showrooms’, peeked into reactor control rooms and walked down the dark shafts of former uranium mines and recently built underground storages. They have been to the Gorleben Archive–the living memory of the Wendland resistance, talked to activists about the future of anti-nuclear movements, and listened to the story of the Hungarian village Ófalu, where villagers resisted a waste repository in the 1980s thanks to their self-organization. They learned about the ‘nuclear elite’ of Paks, the underground life of the Morsleben repository and their extravagant Carnival parties, and about the struggles of the tiny village of Bátaapáti to survive and escape depopulation, which was only possible due to a trade-off made to host its repository. They admired the former Wismut SDAG's uranium-glass plate collection, glowing under blacklight in the uranium museum of Bad Schlema, and wondered how to critically reflect on this intriguing materiality.
From November 17–19, 2023 the work group members and participating artists will present the preliminary results of their research at a Research Assembly. The project will culminate in an exhibition, which will open at nGbK in November 2024.
With contributions by Ana Alenso, András Cséfalvay, Theresa Deichert, Krisztina Erdei, Ende Gelände / Kali, Gorleben Archiv / Anna Gäde, Green Youth Pécs / Júlia Konkoly-Thege, Max Haiven, Moritz Maria Karl, Péter Molnár, Csilla Nagy & Rita Süveges, Nowhere Kitchen (Pepe Dayaw de Manila), PPKK (Schönfeld & Scoufaras), Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, Katarina Šević, Sonya Schönberger, Marike Schreiber, Oxana Timofeeva, Andrea Vetter, Anna Witt, Working Group Image Archive Asse II (Susanne Kriemann, Judith Milz, Lena Reisner)
nGbK work group: Katalin Erdődi, Marc Herbst, Julia Kurz, Virág Major-Kremer, Vincent Schier
Production: Karoline Kerkai, nGbK (Germany), Dina Darabos, Kinga Kovács (Hungary)
Funded by the Zero programme of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation). Funded by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media).
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Program
Location: nGbK am Alex, Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 11/13, 10178 Berlin
Language: English with whisper translation into German (exceptions see program)
Free admission. Accessible with wheelchairs and strollers.
Friday, November 17
Nuclear waste as nuclear cultural heritage, anti-nuclear activism and resistance, connecting past and future struggles
17:00–18:00
Welcome & Introduction to SALT. CLAY. ROCK.: guided tour by work group members and selected artists through the assembly's research display
18:00–19:00
Keynote by Dr. Eglė Rindzevičiūtė: Hosts and Hostages of Nuclear Infrastructures: Managing and Containing Nuclear Materialities in the Post-Soviet Space
19:30–21:00 (in German and Hungarian, with whisper translation into English)
Conversation led by artist Anna Witt: on the pasts and futures of anti-nuclear resistance
Participants: Ende Gelände / Kali, Gorleben Archiv / Gabriele Haas, Green Youth Pécs / Júlia Konkoly-Thege
21:00–22:00
Artistic contribution: PPKK listening session
Saturday, November 18
Energy futures and solar politics, imaginaries of the future and the deep time of nuclear waste storage
10.00–13.00 (in English, without translation)
Writing After Their Future: A Sci-fi Fictioning Workshop with Max Haiven.
Please register until 15 November at anmeldung@ngbk.de
13.00–14.00
Nowhere Kitchen: Pepe's Pinoy Pop-Up
14.00–15.00
Welcome & Introduction to SALT. CLAY. ROCK.: collective reading of texts written during the sci-fi-fictioning workshop, followed by the curators' and selected artists’ guided tour of the research display
15.00–16.30
Collective conversation with commissioned artists and guests on their research and their artistic approaches to the German and Hungarian sites where they will be working.
Participants: Ana Alenso (online), András Cséfalvay, Krisztina Erdei, Csilla Nagy & Rita Süveges, Sonya Schönberger, Marike Schreiber, Working Group Image Archive Asse II (Susanne Kriemann, Judith Milz, Lena Reisner)
17.00–18.00
Radioactive waste and deep time: a geologist’s perspective
Conversation with the geologist Péter Molnár (Pécs, Hungary), moderated by Csilla Nagy & Rita Süveges
18.00–19.00
Nowhere Kitchen: A Migrant Cooking Theatre of Spicy Histories and Collective Eating Ritual of Leftovers led by Pepe Dayaw de Manila
19.00–20.00
Keynote by Oxana Timofeeva: Energy and Intelligence: From Solar to Nuclear
Followed by a Q&A led by András Cséfalvay
20.00–21.30
Conversation on energy futures and the challenges of the ‘green transition’
Participants: Theresa Deichert, Moritz Maria Karl, Andrea Vetter
Sunday, November 19
12:00–18:00
Exhibition of the research display
