**Documenting an invisible, inaccessible exhibition within the
radioactive Fukushima exclusion zone.
**
The twelfth volume of the Critical Spatial Practices series focuses on
"Don't Follow the Wind," the acclaimed collaborative project situated in
Fukushima's radioactive exclusion zone. The book explores the long-term
environmental crisis in the coastal Japanese region through this
ongoing, inaccessible exhibition, which maintains traces of human
presence amid the fallout of the March 2011 nuclear reactor meltdown
that displaced entire towns. What can art do in a continuing catastrophe
when destruction and contamination have made living impossible?
The exhibition is located inside the exclusion zone, an evacuated
radioactive area established after the nuclear disaster that forcibly
separated residents from their homes, land, and community. In
cooperation with former residents, participating artists installed newly
commissioned works at sites in the exclusion zone. Although the
exhibition opened in March 2015, the zone is still inaccessible to the
public--the exhibition, like the radiation, is virtually invisible. The
exhibition can only be viewed when restrictions are lifted and people
are permitted to return. This might take several years or decades--a
period that could extend beyond our lifetime. While nuclear
contamination has displaced and ruptured communities, new temporary and
translocal formations have emerged among the residents who have lent
their sites, other former residents collaborating on the project, and
the artists, curators, and cultural workers.
This book includes new texts by feminist theorist Silvia Federici, art
historians Noi Sawaragi and Sven Lütticken, and political philosopher
Jodi Dean. The project was codeveloped and curated by the collective
Don't Follow the Wind, whose members include Chim↑Pom, Kenji Kubota, Eva
& Franco Mattes, and Jason Waite. The participating artists include Ai
Weiwei, Chim↑Pom, Nikolaus Hirsch & Jorge Otero-Pailos, Meiro Koizumi,
Eva & Franco Mattes, Grand Guignol Mirai, Aiko Miyanaga, Ahmet Öğüt,
Trevor Paglen, Taryn Simon, Nobuaki Takekawa, and Kota Takeuchi.
