Arts of Atomic Accountability

Film Festival + Scholar-Artist-Activist Talks + Community Discussion

As the geopolitical, health, and environmental consequences of nuclear technology haunt our past, present, and future, how do we transmit knowledge about this heavy legacy, from one site to another, from one generation to the next? When the U.S. Department of Energy describes dealing with radioactive waste from nuclear weapons development as “legacy management,” the phrase denotes cleanup, in terms of toxic landscapes and historical memory. This film festival + speaker series dwells instead in community histories of bombing, mining, processing, testing, fallout, accidents, and uncontained waste—to ask what stories we need to tend and act upon for a livable future. The impact of radiation ecologies is notoriously difficult to see, making film and public art critical forms of making nuclear histories visible. Join scholars, artists, and activists as they examine colonial and infrastructural violence and share strategies for building reparative relations across communities, in convenings that connect the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington state to locations across the U.S. and the world.

Image: Helki Frantzen Film Still