Paper short abstract:

Short films about the Picturing the Invisible exhibition: a collaboration between artists, policymakers, and academics that makes visible the legacies of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Watch guided tours, interviews with artists and essayists, and hear from STS student co-curators.

Paper long abstract:

Organized in memory of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, Picturing the Invisible provides a striking photographic portrait of life in the wake of the triple disaster. Co-curated with students at TU Munich, this traveling exhibition brings together eight talented photographers, working in the affected territories, and pairs their works with essays commissioned from policymakers (e.g. former British Ambassador to Japan Sir David Warren), academics (e.g. Sheila Jasanoff, Brian Wynne, Kyoko Sato), authors (e.g. nature writer Robert Macfarlane), activists (e.g. Aileen Mioko Smith of "Minamata" fame), and citizen scientists (e.g. Hisako Sakiyama of the Takagi School of Citizen Science). Together these works make visible the intangible legacies of the crisis that Japan remembers as “3.11”: the ghostly touch of radiation, lingering trauma, and the resilience of those communities who are rebuilding their lives in the wake. This exhibition was previously shown at the: Royal Geographical Society, London (2021); TUM, Munich (2022); and Heong Gallery, Downing College, Cambridge (2023), where it received more than 2100 visitors. This short set of films explores the exhibition and its themes, bringing the artworks, artists, essayists, and curators to 4S / EASST through a series of tours, interviews, and performances. The student curators and co-convenors of this session are: Karl Dagher, Caitlin Kearney, Christopher Kurth, Nicholas McCay, and Elisenda Passola.