Art in post-catastrophic geography. "Don't follow the wind project in Fukushima"

Abstract

The text is a case study of the curatorial project Don't Follow the Wind (2015-), carried out by the Chim Pom art collective in the Fukushima Exclusion Zone, designated after the nuclear power plant disaster (2011). This action was taken in a space subjected to a state of exception, limited by boundaries determined by the level of radiation. Inside, there are works of art inaccessible to the public, integrally related to the context of the post-catastrophic landscape of the Zone. Before the radioactive substances decay, these artworks may undergo material degradation. The exhibition changes its tone over time, and the forms of its presentation outside the Zone in the so-called Non-Visitor Centres establish a relationship between the site and non-site. Don't Follow the Wind is also aimed at a dialogue with the community affected by the disaster and subjected to dislocation, allowing traumatized individuals to speak, so their voices break the forced "geography of silence". The curatorial team focused on what is invisible (radiation) and informal (the grassroots circulation of information, empathy and interpersonal relations). The project seems to be the protagonist of the role of art in a world in which post-catastrophic geography is supposed to have an enclave-like character with numerous zones of disidentification, just as today its civilization is confronted with the image of its own ruins, just like heterotopias in the Foucaultian mirror, constituting a "place without a place".