Nuclear legacies can last for millions of years, and artists will continue to investigate them within the contemporary conditions of our time. In the twenty first century Kota Takeuchi is interested in how we physically view and perform images of nuclear events and their memory. His practice investigates relationships between media and social memory by revisiting historical monuments and creating media archaeologies of nuclear industrial legacies. He also has a powerful ability to collapse the visual and emotional distance between the viewer and the subject, perhaps because he has chosen to live in the context of his work, to be located and engaged in the complex social, economic and aesthetic processes of the post-Fukushima event. Takeuchi’s embedded artworks draw us closer to the contaminated site of the dilapidated Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant, and trace connections with nuclear sites across the planet.
Text in English and in Japanese.