Picturing the Invisible: Rebuilding communities in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster
How does one photograph radiation? Trauma? Or the resilience of communities forced to contend with both? Picturing the Invisible brings together seven celebrated photographers to examine the lasting legacy of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster, pairing their artworks with essays by policymakers, authors, academics, and activists. Exhibited at the Royal Geographical Society (2021) and TU Munich (2022) this exhibition is now travelling to the Heong Gallery, Cambridge (2023).
Cross-border/international
Germany
Other
United Kingdom
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Mainly rural
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Over the last 10 years, Fukushima residents have repeatedly asked me to “tell the world” about the challenges they still face. Picturing the Invisible is a public engagement project designed in response to these requests. Comprising (i) an award-winning travelling exhibition, (ii) website and online videos, and (iii) a planned documentary, the project examines the lingering legacies of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Disaster.
The exhibition brings together seven acclaimed artists working in the territories affected by the “triple disaster” and pairs them with essays by policymaker, activists, and academics to place them in a broader context. The exhibition has been shown at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) (October–December 2021) and TUM (June 2022), winning the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology’s Ziman Award for public engagement. The exhibition is now travelling to the Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge (February–April 2023).
To increase its reach, I plan to complement the exhibition with a growing range of online materials, including a documentary: Picturing the Invisible – The Lions of Fukushima. For more than 300 years, the rural village of Yamakiya has celebrated October with a ‘dance of three lions’ at Yasaka shrine. This tradition came to an abrupt end in 2011, due to the nuclear disaster. Six years later, the evacuation order for Yamakiya was lifted. One third of the village’s roughly 1,000 residents have now returned and are striving to reclaim their traditions. Yet those who have returned are old, (more than 70% of returnees are over the age of 65,) and have found that few wish to buy produce ‘made in Fukushima’. This documentary will follow preparations for the ‘dance of three lions’, as well as following the artists from the exhibition who work in Yamakiya; using these cultural stories as a lens to examine the challenges of rebuilding life in the wake of a nuclear disaster.
Nuclear
Disaster
Sustainability
Art
Public engagement
This project was designed in response to Fukushima residents’ requests to support the sustainable reconstruction of Fukushima by engaging European audiences. The project is therefore closely tied to three New European Bauhaus objectives, in that it: (i) identifies Fukushima as one of the places that most needs support, having suffered a major environmental disaster; (ii) celebrates and supports Fukushima residents’ efforts to regain a sense of belonging; and (iii) promotes a reengagement with nature in the affected territories.
The project brings together contributions from the arts and sciences to find great beauty in the territories affected by the nuclear disaster. As one visitor to the exhibition writes, in Fukushima one finds a “sense of community, the will to rebuild – in a new environmentally sustainable way.” The exhibition showcases the resilience of communities, while also examining the challenges they continue to face, including the contamination (captured in the works of Yoi Kawakubo and Masamichi Kagaya) and trauma (evoked by the work of Giles Price).
The project aims to engage European audiences in the construction of a sustainable future. As one visitor noted, it is “important to continue remembering and recognizing those disasters that are so often ‘left behind.’” Fukushima continues to require investment to decontaminate the exclusion zone. Moreover, the economic sustainability of life in Fukushima requires that both domestic and foreign audiences support Fukushima businesses.
Finally, the project aims to prompt reflection on sustainability in Europe. The exhibition asks what it means to remember Fukushima in Europe today, at a time when the EU remains divided on nuclear power. In engaging European audiences with the complexities of life after a nuclear disaster, the project aims to enrich this civic debate.
Picturing the Invisible brings together some of the most powerful artworks to have emerged from the Tohoku region, produced by celebrated artists, and twins them with evocative essays. The aesthetic quality of the project is reflected in the considerable media attention it has generated, receiving 5-page features in The New Statesman and The British Journal of Photography, as well as featuring as a lead story on BBC Science Focus. Editors at the Financial Times and Orion have also expressed an interest in featuring the exhibition and articles will be published in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Grafikmagazin, Compass Magazine, and Anthroposphere. Describing the exhibition as “cool and noteworthy”, Marigold Warner (The British Journal of Photography) emphasised the novelty of the exhibition’s curation and the success with which it conveys the multifaceted complexity of the Japanese nuclear debate to a foreign audience. Similarly impressed, Gerry Brakus (The New Statesman) described the exhibition as a “really striking and evocative collaboration between academics, artists and policy makers”; going on to emphasise that it is “educational, beautiful, heartbreaking, and inspiring… Unmissable.”
The event has been exceptionally well-attended since its opening night at the RGS, drawing notable academics, artists, curators (e.g. Senior Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, Magda Kearney), foundation managers (e.g. Director of the US-UK Fulbright Commission, Maria Balinska), trustees, policymakers (e.g. ICRP President, Werner Ruhm), broadcasters (e.g. Bobby Seagull), and royals (e.g. Princess Anne). Just as importantly, the exhibition has had an enthusiastic reception from the public, who have eagerly joined the many tours of the exhibition and left consistently positive feedback – describing the exhibition as everything from “imaginative and informative” to “hauntingly beautiful”. The project has clearly had a positive emotional impact on these visitors.
Picturing the Invisible is both inclusively designed, with students acting as co-curators (see: stakeholders), and designed to be inclusive. Entry to the exhibition has been free at each of the venues and 15 free tours have been organized for members of the public, as well as schools (e.g. Queen Elizabeth’s School), student groups (e.g. UCL Art Society), academic societies (e.g. Fulbright), and interest groups (e.g. Anglo-Japanese Friendship Society). I remain firm in my commitment to access in taking this concept forward. I plan to organize 10 further tours during the exhibition’s time at the Heong Gallery, offering tours to student societies (e.g. Blake Society), local schools (e.g. Hills Road Sixth Form College), youth groups (e.g. attRAct, Art Assassins), and community centers (e.g. Akeman Community Centre).
Recognizing that access to physical exhibition spaces can be challenging for some members of society, both due to COVID (e.g. the elderly, those with underlying health concerns, etc.) and more deep seated issues of access (e.g. those who face mobility issues, parents of small children, etc.), we have also made every effort to create exciting opportunities to engage with the exhibition online. All artworks and essays are available on our dedicated website (picturing-the-invisible.art) designed by Botho Willer. A trailer and professionally produced tours of the exhibition at both the RGS and TUM have also been made available on Youtube:
• Trailer for the exhibition at the RGS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZepgTQbdjE&list=PLcFPSdOV8Jxpw44RCMHpRYLYnZJFysqkn&index=2&t=50s
• Curator’s tour at the RGS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awy2L6EBEIM&list=PLcFPSdOV8Jxpw44RCMHpRYLYnZJFysqkn&index=1&t=2s
• Curator’s tour at TUM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e63bNlk-ZCo&list=PLcFPSdOV8Jxpw44RCMHpRYLYnZJFysqkn&index=3
The documentary will further promote remote engagement with the core themes of the project and will be made freely available online.
Firstly, Picturing the Invisible aims to benefit the citizens of Fukushima and was initiated at their request. Its curation reflects a decade of research into the Fukushima disaster (as a BA, MPhil, and PhD), including 18 months of fieldwork. Many of my interviewees in Japan have been directly involved in the development of this project. The exhibition provides a platform to citizen scientists (e.g. Hisako Sakiyama) and activists (e.g. Aileen Mioko Smith), who have contributed essays, and the proposed documentary will give additional citizens living in the affected territories a voice. More generally, the exhibition’s themes reflect the voices of Fukushima residents, who continue to shape the project through continuous feedback on proposals and prototypes.
Secondly, the project aims to benefit its European audiences, stimulating reflection on questions of energy and sustainability. Our opening panels have asked, “What does it mean to remember Fukushima in Europe today? COVID-19, climate change, and Ukraine.” And sparked debates regarding Europe’s divided stance on nuclear. “The combination of essays, visual artworks and the opening discussions allowed me to think about this in different ways”, one visitor wrote in their feedback. “Reflecting on ‘nuclear’ in a general way is something I’ve not done before.” The volume of visitor feedback in this vein reflects the project’s success in enriching civic debate.
Finally, the exhibition also aims to help its host institutions (i.e. RGS, TUM, and Downing College) to fulfill their civic role, bringing citizens into (elite) academic spaces and engaging them in dialogue. RGS Director Joe Smith described the project as: "Visually arresting and clear in its message, Picturing the Invisible is a model for getting maximum impact out of the Director's Gallery. It engaged an impressively large audience and will be given as an example to future curators working at the RGS. An exemplary public engagement project.”
Rooted in my decade of scholarship on the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, the project draws on contributions from local (e.g. Lieko Shiga), national (e.g. Sakiyama Hisako), international (e.g. former British Ambassador to Japan Sir David Warren), and European (e.g. former Director of CEPN and ICRP Vice-Chair Jacques Lochard) actors. Moreover, research participants at the local (i.e. town), regional (i.e. Fukushima prefecture), and national level have shaped the project through their feedback, workshopping proposals, and prototypes for the project. This has not only enriched the Picturing the Invisible project but has also promoted dialogue among various stakeholders involved in the process.
Picturing the Invisible is also a pedagogical project, rooted in collaboration between STS students and lecturers. European students are, therefore, a key stakeholder. Knowing that the pandemic had robbed students of a “normal” university experience, I resolved to offer my students something extra. To this end, I decided to integrate the curation of Picturing the Invisible into my teaching. Graduate Students on my Immersion Project (Picturing the Invisible: Communicating a Nuclear Disaster), were invited not just to learn about critical approaches to science communication and public engagement but also to put their learning into practice by working as assistant curators on the exhibition. Students were involved in every stage of the exhibition’s organisation, from discussing the narrative arc of the exhibition, selecting the artists and essayists, and discussing venues. They were also listed as co-winners of EASST’s Ziman Award. The recognition of this project with a New European Bauhaus Award would not only reward a deserving and innovative project, but also signal the EU’s support for collaborative, innovative modes of teaching.
Picturing the Invisible is fundamentally interdisciplinary – the decision to pair artworks with essays bringing together the worlds of art, academia, and policy. The heterodox selection of essayists merits attention. This project brings together quality collaborators from a range of disciplines and trainings, each with vastly different interpretations of the challenges posed by the nuclear disaster. The essayists include policymakers (e.g. former British Ambassador to Japan David Warren), experts on radiation protection (e.g. former ICRP Vice-Chair Jacques Lochard), scholars of STS (e.g. 2022 Holber Laureate Sheila Jasanoff), Japanologists (e.g. Richard Samuels), citizen scientists (e.g. Sakiyama Hisako), and famed activists (e.g. Aileen Mioko Smith). The project’s ability to stabilise co-operation between collaborators from opposite aisles of the Fukushima Daiichi debate has significantly enhanced the richness with which it is able to explore the disaster’s legacy.
This cross fertilisation of art, policy experience, and academic expertise clearly enriched visitors’ engagement with the exhibition – helping them to see new connections between the knowledge domains. “It’s great to see the commonalities between arts and research. They are all up to thoroughly make the invisible visible”, one visitor wrote. “An exhibit with art pieces so hauntingly beautiful they would have you forget their gruesome realities”, another visitor added. “The essays accompanying the pictures give much needed context and emphasize the impact of 3.11, both on the people affected directly and the international response to this tragedy.”
The programme of events associated with the project has fostered further dialogue among the contributors, many of whom have begun to correspond and claim that these new connections will benefit their future work. All contributors will be involved in providing feedback on plans for the documentary and will have opportunities to debate preliminary cuts.
While most science communication projects aim to convey (simplified) facts to a passive audience, Picturing the Invisible uses the seductive power of art to actively engage audiences with the complexities of life in the wake of a nuclear disaster. The feedback that we received from visitors constantly stressed the novelty of the approach and how it had prompted them to think about nuclear issues in new ways. “Thank you for this intriguing exhibition. What a thoughtful, unusual way to approach a controversial issue!” one visitor wrote. “Such an interesting exhibit that makes you think about the hidden nature of the reality we experience every day”, another added. This novel focus on culture as a lens for engaging publics with complex sustainability issues will be taken forward in my planned documentary.
The project has also engaged with the context of COVID-19 in a novel way. Between 2020 and 2022, the role of art was often presented as providing distraction and consolation. In the middle of a public health crisis, no one wanted to engage with another contentious topic, many curators reasoned. Picturing the Invisible bucked this trend, framing COVID as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. As one of my students said, the pandemic should allow us to better appreciate the stresses of “seeing an invisible danger all around you”. One way in which we drew out the psychological parallels between Fukushima and COVID was to include the work of Giles Price – an artist noted for using thermal cameras in both Fukushima and the “first wave” in London to evoke the feeling of facing an invisible danger – and pair his photographs with an interactive installation built around a thermal camera (loaned by FLIR; and the result of a student’s initiative). The exhibition thus invites visitors to use their own experiences of COVID-19 as a lens through which to engage with life in the wake of a nuclear disaster. (For more details, please see the GeoHumanities article attached.)
Picturing the Invisible is designed as a travelling exhibition, allowing the show to be easily and inexpensively transferred to other locations. As the production of the artworks was the primary cost associated with the exhibition, only the more modest costs of transportation and insurance need to be covered for new groups and contexts to benefit. The OECD (Paris, France) and Oslo Museum of Technology (Norway) have expressed an interest in hosting the exhibition and the Rita Allen Foundation has invited me to submit a proposal to take the exhibition to the US. A proposal has also been submitted to the Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum in Futaba, Fukushima. With the support of a New European Bauhaus Award, new European communities could continue to benefit from the project for years to come.
The creation of engaging online materials (e.g. website, video tours, webinars) also allows the project to seamlessly reach new contexts and beneficiaries. To date, our online materials have been used as a teaching resource at TUM, MIT, and Cambridge University. They have also been shown at policy conferences, including at ICRP and OECD-NEA meetings. I aim to further increase the transferability of the project’s learnings through the production of the proposed documentary, which will be made freely available online.
In addition to the pedagogical resources created by the project, it will also serve as a case study of project-based teaching. To empower others to replicate the teaching format, I am documenting my learnings from the project in articles (e.g. GeoHumanities article attached) and organising seminars on project-based learning (e.g. The Nuclear Option: Promises and Pitfalls of Project-Based Learning (March 2023)), which brings Picturing the Invisible into conversation with Prof. Ryo Morimoto’s Titration project. The goal of Picturing the Invisible is not just to directly engage civil society but also to empower others to do the same.
How do we live in a contaminated world? And how can we find new ways to value nature, which can no longer take the form of an ‘untouched’ or ‘pristine’ wilderness, but nonetheless requires our commitment and protection, if it is to be bequeathed to future generations. These are global questions in the Anthropocene: an era in which humanity’s touch can be felt everywhere, from the littered slopes of Everest to the micro-plastic suffused Arctic. Picturing the Invisible addresses these global challenges in a local way. It brings together the worlds of art and science to find great beauty in the contaminated landscapes of Fukushima. The exhibition celebrates local citizens’ efforts to rediscover a sense of belonging in a place radically transformed by nuclear disaster. It is both a call to action, which invites the European community to support citizens’ efforts to decontaminate and reclaim Fukushima, as well as a source of inspiration. After all, if life can be rebuilt in the wake of a nuclear disaster, surely, we can rise to the challenge of addressing our own (more modest) issues of waste and contamination.
But Picturing the Invisible is also a warning of how devastating and complex issues of waste and contamination can be. More than this, it is a local project that aims to nurture global leaders, capable of tackling these wicked problems. By integrating the delivery of this project into my teaching, I have given my students the opportunity to learn by doing; teaching them how to bring together the worlds of art, science, and policy to address a complex environmental issue – a skill they will no doubt take forward into their respective careers. To award Picturing the Invisible a New European Bauhaus Award would be to recognize the role that education must play in addressing global challenges and to celebrate the inclusion of students in delivering real and impactful projects as a valuable form of teaching – a fitting message to send in the European Year of Skills.
