Les nucléaires et les choses

2019 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

47:00 minutes

Hikaru Fujii

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Les nucléaires et les choses by Hikaru Fujii is the first video produced in the artist’s long-term project focusing on the Futaba Town Museum of History and Folklore, located in the “difficult-to-return zone” since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in 2011. Over four years, Fujii filmed the rescue and displacement of this museum’s collection of archeological, historical, or cultural artifacts outside the zone, in order to avoid radioactive contamination and biological damage. He followed the actions, gestures, and reflections of the Futaba Museum curator Takamitsu Yoshino and his collaborators, charged with the preservation of these objects and the knowledge they contain about the territory they come from and the life of its community, struck by the disaster. Expanding his field of action, Fujii organized discussions and recorded the voices of those reflecting on the crisis of memory and culture. In this context, he produced a new series of video works and discussions. The video is based on a symposium organized and filmed by Fujii in Iwaki city, Fukushima in October 2017. It convened a group of experts in anthropology, archaeology, political science and history, as well as (former) museum curators from the Futaba Town Museum of History and Folklore, Hiroshima Peace Museum, and the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, among others, to discuss ideas linked to the memory and representation of the catastrophe. Intertwining a documentary and performative approach, testimonials and future scenarios, the work reveals a story more complex than its dominant or ‘official’ version. Following the journey of this collection of artifacts contaminated by their layers of history, as well as the ideas of those who imagine their future, Les nucléaires et les choses sheds new light on this ongoing catastrophe.

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Hikaru Fujii utilizes film to bridge art and social activism. To engage with specific historical moments and social issues related to systems of dominance, he creates various forms of dialogue in order to document tensions and seek out discourse and critique. Through films and installations, he undertakes extensive research and fieldwork to investigate existing systems and structures, and to probe into hegemonic power embedded in social relations and discourses. Rather than presenting his research matter-of-fact, his work attempts to reinterpret events from contemporary issues and perspectives, exploring the potentiality for political resistance.

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Colors:

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• calamity.n.01
• environmental.a.02
• museum.n.01
• science.n.01
• documentary.n.01