2. criticality - a critical state; especially the point at which a nuclear reaction is self-sustaining
critical point, crossroads, juncture - a crisis situation or point in time when a critical decision must be made; "at that juncture he had no idea what to do"; "he must be made to realize that the company stands at a critical point"
flash point, flashpoint - point at which something is ready to blow up

Robert Thurman in an interview with Transendent Nation

"The world saves it self all the time, so people really need to save themselves....The main thing is to be happy, you know, and forget about saving the world. why save the world? let them blow it up, who gives a damn. People will be reborn somewhere else and if they have to blow it up one more time, they have blown it up millions of times, and if they have to blow it up another time then they will all go through the whole freak out all together one more time....as they create a new world and then live on...the main thing is everybody should become joyful." Robert Thurman in an interview with Transendent Nation

Returing home after nuclear accident in Fukushima

Report from The Guardian UK on residents of Fukushima returning home to visit.

http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk

"designs for fragile personalities in anxious times"

The nuclear is like revolution. -jean baudrillard

"The nuclear is like revolution. nothing is gained from hoping for the one or fearing the other, since both have already happened. Everything is already liberated, changed, subverted. What more do you want? There's no use hoping: the things are there, born or stillborn, already in the past- it's exasperating, but what can you do about it? No future. No cause for panic either: everything's already nuclearized, enucleated, vaporized. The explosion has already happened, the bomb is only a metaphor. What more do you want: everything is already wiped off the map. It's no good dreaming: the confrontation has already happened, quietly, everywhere. Yet it isn't enough for things to have happened: we also want to see them as a spectacle. The people wanted the spectacle of the revolution. Things themselves also want to experience the rupture of a spectacular metaphor. This is the revenge of the objectivity in which we have confined them.

What will become of the nuclear? Will we insist on having the grand spectacle of the atomic confrontation for the beauty of it? If that happens, it will not be for reasons currently advanced - the fatal dynamic of the use-value of weapons or the species becoming resigned to its own destruction - but from the irresistibility of the spectacle of destruction and the necessity, for us, of deriving some enjoyment from it."

From Cool Memories by Jean Baudrillard translated by Chris Turner verso publishing 1987 NY p 55-56

Small Nuclear Plant Exlosion in France

CBS reports on the small explosion at the Marcoule Nuclear Plant recently in France, a country heavily dependent on nuclear power. No leaks have been found almost a week later, which is great!

Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 at ICP

Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945 from ICP on Vimeo.

International Center for Photography's exhibition this past summer of declassified photos from US government research team after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima. The photos of this show where about 4x6" in a small installation room that in concentric circles were organized based on the distance of the photo's location from the where the bomb hit.

Here on the Leonard Lopate Show, the curators, Erin Barnett and Adam Harrison Levy talk about the work-

Nagasaki 64 Years Later

Report by Democracy Now on the current state of Nuclear Affairs after 64 years (Hiroshima dropped on August 6th and Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945) and the both award winning and CENSORED journalistic work of George Weller on the bombs dropped .

Awesome Face Soap Campaign

NO NUKES

'Stay' with Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, the E Street Band & Rosemary Butler from the NO NUKES benefit concert for a Non Nuclear Future at Madison Square Garden, 1979, on Youtube. We love this song. Sorry we couldn't embed for ya!

Radio Bikini

Radio Bikini from editorlisa on Vimeo.

This documentary by Robert Stone is very inspirational to the Sad/Not Sad project.

WAMI

Western Automatic Music, Inc. (sample) by rulenumbersix

space layout draft

Project description and bios

Sad/Not Sad: Nuclear Winter is a 24 hr, all ages event, January 13th-14th 2012, which invites the public into a transformed art space. It is meant to address our collective ever-present fears of nuclear power while alluding to the use and abuse of other types of power. The event will be curated and managed by; performance artist and puppeteer Amber Marsh; sound designer C. Ezra Lange; and guerrilla street artist Zoe McCloskey. In powerful contrast to the darker, somber, cold winter outside, the warm, bright and buzzing interior will contain; a large wall painting of simplified smokestacks; a projection of declassified 50’s nuclear test footage, live performances from numerous local experimental bands; an interactive work of wearable deformed limbs; and a sculpture in monument to the elderly Fukushima engineers who are volunteering their lives to clean the disaster areas in Japan. Cloud drawings by Caitlin Gianniny and figurative oil paintings by Alfredo Farina will be included. Yellow cake consumables, a pile of bananas measured by a Geiger Counter and non alcoholic drinks will be served. As party-goers inhabit the installed space, intake artistic statements, dance to tailored music and imbibe curated refreshments, they experience an overall understanding of the issues of irradiation and nuclear power which validates worries and purges guilt about all types of man-made pollution and sickness.

All elements of the event/installation are meant to be a shock, a catharsis, and a therapeutic enlivening of the spirit infused with the political. To quote Nato Thompson, “I really feel like we are at a cross-roads and paranoia is our major hurdle.” Our Transformative Experience Art aims to allay and validate that paranoia. We will project awe-inspiring re-appropriated imagery from a film of declassified military footage of post-WW2 atmospheric nuclear testing, which, as curators, we find to be upsetting and beautiful at the same time. To enhance alternating feelings of discomfort and comfort live music will range from loud, grinding free jazz improvisations to pink noise soundscapes.

We will spend much of the preparation time for the event in a research mode, developing a presentation of facts in a Children’s Museum, hands-on learning type of display. The coolant smokestacks wall painting will be a formally vivid and bold representation of a nuclear power plant, but the details in the painting will be printed facts relating radiation exposure levels to distances.

The human psyche regards very large numbers abstractly. Our group, Ir.Radiated, is most interested in gripping the audience with a sensorial experience and unpacking the abstract. The issue of empathy vs apathy is tied to the difficulty we have in caring about experiences not directly related to our own. For us, this idea has further significance to casualties of the Iraq War and other crises on our Spaceship Earth. With this project we are interested in philosophizing tangentially about the well being of the global community in relationship to personal life.

Artist Bios
In the last year, Amber Marsh has been an art/puppet director for party installations at Le Passage Nightclub in Chicago's prestigious Gold Coast neighborhood, performances at the Cabaret Metro Theater, and multiple commercial productions with film studio The Odd Machine; Zoe has installed interactive works in Miami and Pittsburgh and lectured and at Columbia College of Art in conjunction with the exhibition 60 Inches from Center: Contemporary Graffitti. C. Ezra Lange, a Chicago based musician, composer and sound engineer, who runs the record label Rule No. 6 and recently has had works performed at The Intuit Museum of Outsider Art and The Hideout, Chicago's most loved small venue. Also with us is recent Northwestern MBA Marina Primosch, who has agreed to be a consultant and use her connections to attract additional corporate sponsorship and marketing opportunities for our event.

Amber Marsh http://www.ambermarsh.info

Zoe McCloskey http://www.zoemccloskey.net

C. Ezra Lange is a musician & sound engineer with deep roots in Chicago. He performs with Schwinntonation, Erick Deshaun Dorris & Th' Bored of Education, Patience Gloria, Jesse Thomas & His Electric Band, The Little Star Music Box, The DCTop40 Orchestra, RATSNAKETURBORAT, and more. He has produced albums by young Chicago bands Dee Dee Spies and fAbrics, and has engineered albums for Black Bear Combo, as well as clarinetist/composer Guillermo Gregorio. He runs the locally-minded micro-label, Rule No. 6 Records: thereisnorule6.blogspot.com.

ALL AGES EVENT

A large-scale, one-day public event, mind expanding party that highlights historical information on nuclear power and illuminates contemporary theories of radiation amid apocalyptic imagery and exploratory sound content.

The Space

http://app.ourgoods.org/users/2045#

Live Performances by Ratsnake

research