Silver Halide Crystals and Ionizing Radiation: A Coordinated Performance Towards Materially Witnessing Nuclear Imperialism
Date
Authors
Supervisor
Item type
Journal Article
Degree name
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor and Francis Group
Abstract
In early 2024 the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that the Doomsday clock was to remain set to ninety seconds before midnight. This announcement, along with Israeli nuclear threats as part of its ongoing genocide in Palestine; Russian nuclear intimidation towards Ukraine; the dangers of impending nuclear war between the USA and China; North Korean missile testing; the release of Oppenheimer (2023); and the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyu, a Japanese grassroots organization of survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks, has reignited public consciousness concerning not only nuclear imperialism and the possibility of nuclear warfare, but also what it looks like. This article responds to the urgency of this current context by exploring Polish artist Monika Niwelińska’s attempts to visualize something as pervasively enormous as nuclear imperialism through her photographic artworks. Through close readings of her series γ[gamma trace] (2017), it specifically focuses on how the material properties of photographic film can be used to visualize ionizing radiation. In Niwelińska’s artworks, radiation and the light sensitive silver halide crystals of filmic emulsion enter into a type of performative relationship where one literally imprints itself into the other. I explore how this relationship offers methods for socio-ethical visualizing of not only ionizing radiation itself but also, by proxy, the associated discourses of nuclear imperialism. I am interested in how conceiving of radiation as a coordinated performative interaction may in turn support efforts for nuclear disarmament. Methodologically framed via artist and theorist Susan Schuppli’s conception of material witnessing, I advocate for forms of politicized witnessing that go beyond visibility. Instead, measurable evidence of the nuclear is physically integrated into the filmic emulsion of Niwelińska’s images.Description
Source
Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, ISSN: 1352-8165 (Print); 1469-9990 (Online), Taylor and Francis Group, 29(3), 99-108. doi: 10.1080/13528165.2024.2454119
Publisher's version
Rights statement
© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.