Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou & Agnès Villette – Transient Marshlands, Permanent Progress

Transient Marshlands, Permanent Progress – Geographies of Uncertainty by Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou & Agnès Villette

SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022

16 October 2022

Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

On the shores of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands lie three nuclear installations forming an eclectic nuclear geography. Gravelines, Doel and Borssele nuclear power stations started operating in the 1970s on the unstable marsh soils of reclaimed land – that is new land created out of the water. Today, rising sea levels due to global warming threaten the power plants imminently, requiring the construction of dykes and elevated buffers, which are currently being implemented. We explore these swampy geographies as places where the future-oriented temporality of the nuclear sector crumbles. Both nuclear reactors, as the cathedrals of the 20th century, and polders, as the epitome of hydraulic engineering, are archetypal figures of modernity. Both symbolise the conquest of natural environments and consolidate national identities. Yet, despite their ‘solidity’, the existence of these three nuclear infrastructures is under threat. As examples, they confirm the importance of countering progress and linear historical narratives of nuclear progress, and help us understand how atomic technologies permeate our lives. Rather than an undefined, deep nuclear future, we are interested in how these nuclearised polders leave the vast temporal scales of nuclear waste behind, offering an opportunity to consider how such technologies are already and urgently affecting the present.

Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 took place at various locations in Amsterdam, interweaving an exhibition, sound performances and discourse programme, accompanied by artist presentations, workshops, excursions and more. As a part of the Biennial programme, the Leaving Traces symposium opened up a forum in which to become attentive to pollution’s invisible, yet harmful touch. Actively rethinking our relation to the climate and our planetary legacies, an array of artists, researchers, curators, and scholars spoke of the many faces of toxicity – from fossil fuels to plastic, from nuclear energy to chemical pollutants. The gathering staged real stories and events of exposure, thinking about ‘leaving traces’ not just as the material act of spreading toxicity, but as art’s potential to reach out and act as a disruptive force in the world.

Find out more at https://sonicacts.com/archive/biennial2022

Credit:

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Recording: Engage! TV

Sound mastering: Monty Mouw

Design: Catalogtree

Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros

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