Book Section
The brief explorations of radiation exposures presented within this essay draw primarily from nuclear art and culture and contribute to the field of nuclear aesthetics, which has long been fixated on the problem of visibility and the representation of nuclear residues. The examples draw primarily from photographic technologies and other aesthetic registers that capture visual residues of radiation. The challenges of nuclear aesthetics are also political and social. This constellation of objects and inquiries is meant to explore the fraught political, environmental, and social relations between radiation, visibility, toxicity, through the concept of exposure. They offer feminist glimpses into other ways of thinking exposure, as it develops in relation to (often imperceptible) toxicity that is not inscribed into a logic that partitions the passive victim of suffering from some pure or unaffected subject. They are examples that are both forms of exposure specific to the nuclear while also, perhaps, helping to expose more nuanced and complex ways of understanding forms of exposure that extend beyond nuclearity.
Keywords: Radiation; Radioactive; Nuclear Culture; Nuclear Aesthetics; Exposure; Toxicity; Feminism; Nuclear Art
Title
Radiating Exposures
Author(s)
Alison Sperling
Identifier
Description
The brief explorations of radiation exposures presented within this essay draw primarily from nuclear art and culture and contribute to the field of nuclear aesthetics, which has long been fixated on the problem of visibility and the representation of nuclear residues. The examples draw primarily from photographic technologies and other aesthetic registers that capture visual residues of radiation. The challenges of nuclear aesthetics are also political and social. This constellation of objects and inquiries is meant to explore the fraught political, environmental, and social relations between radiation, visibility, toxicity, through the concept of exposure. They offer feminist glimpses into other ways of thinking exposure, as it develops in relation to (often imperceptible) toxicity that is not inscribed into a logic that partitions the passive victim of suffering from some pure or unaffected subject. They are examples that are both forms of exposure specific to the nuclear while also, perhaps, helping to expose more nuanced and complex ways of understanding forms of exposure that extend beyond nuclearity.
Is Part Of
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
2020
Subject
Radiation
Radioactive
Nuclear Culture
Nuclear Aesthetics
Exposure
Toxicity
Feminism
Nuclear Art
Rights
© by the author
Except for images or otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Language
en-GB
page start
41
page end
62
Source
Weathering: Ecologies of Exposure, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Arnd Wedemeyer, Cultural Inquiry, 17 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020), pp. 41–62

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Cite as: Alison Sperling, ‘Radiating Exposures’, in Weathering: Ecologies of Exposure, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey and Arnd Wedemeyer, Cultural Inquiry, 17 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020), pp. 41-62 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-17_03>