Beyondness

This work is motivated though sensing the resurgent nuclear threat firstexperienced as a child growing up during the cold war. An aperture in a rustygirder provides a glimpse, captured through a contingent video on a mobilephone, of atomic by-products juxtaposed with the remote beauty of the site atOrford Ness (National Trust, 2021). The provisional ceramic viewfinder makesreference to the framing of our own perception but also the integral role ofphotography within nuclear research, the formation of an accepting public, andresistance through art and journalism. Nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclearwar were acknowledged by political philosopher Hannah Arendt (2007 p.109-110)as: “... fundamental experiences of our age, and if we ignore them it is as if wenever lived in the world that is our world". As contemporary art historians ClaudetteLauzon and John O'Brien (2021) postulate in their recent book: What does it meanto see the world 'through post-atomic eyes’? How do the dangers posed byatomic energy and nuclear warfare shape our responses to other imminentthreats?And how might we understand the ‘slow violence’ (Nixon, 2011) of someof the most pressing issues of sustainability, such as toxic drift and climatechange, as by products of the atomic age?