SALT. CLAY. ROCK. On Nuclear Pasts and Radiant Futures
30 November 2024 – 9 February 2025
Opening: 29 November 2024, 6 pm

Press preview: 29 November 2024, 11 am
Please register by email to presse@ngbk.de

Ongoing geopolitical conflicts and the related energy crisis pose new questions regarding the toxic legacies of nuclear infrastructures and the search for energy alternatives. The two-year artistic-curatorial research project SALT. CLAY. ROCK. On Nuclear Pasts and Radiant Futures investigates how nuclear industries and infrastructures affect our lives, not only delving into the production of nuclear energy and the storage of radioactive waste, but also how impacted communities coexist with their material, social and economic consequences on a daily basis. The exhibition and public program at nGbK shares the results of extensive research done by the participating artists and curators of the nGbK work group, exploring connections between energy, politics, ecology and social movements from a translocal point of view.

The title SALT. CLAY. ROCK. is inspired by the three materials—salt, clay and granite—which are currently considered the most suitable for the storage of radioactive waste. The project juxtaposes the situation in Germany and Hungary, two countries that have chosen radically different paths when it comes to nuclear energy. While Germany initiated its nuclear exit in 2023 with the shutdown of all nuclear power plants, Hungary is building a new nuclear power plant, the heavily debated PAKS II. Despite these differences, both countries are challenged by the search for final repositories for their high-level radioactive waste, which according to an EU regulation, has to be found within national borders. This is an unresolved issue globally; with the exception of the Finnish final repository Onkalo, planned to open in 2025, no other country has accomplished building a safe storage for this high-risk by-product of energy production.

The exhibition SALT. CLAY. ROCK. connects the city of Berlin with rural places in Germany and Hungary that host nuclear infrastructures such as uranium mines, power plants and waste repositories, or have been and still are important sites of anti-nuclear resistance. It presents nine new commissions resulting from the two-year research undertaken by the artists with the curatorial team. Many of the works were created in dialogue with local communities, foregrounding their subjective and grassroots perspectives. This shows how those directly impacted by the day-to-day reality of nuclear infrastructures, coexist with its consequences, as well as its looming yet invisible dangers.
The exhibition is accompanied by a public program including guided tours, performances, discussions and film screenings, which will unfold the artistic-curatorial research and offer additional perspectives on the key questions of the exhibition.

Funded by the Zero programme of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, which aims to support cultural institutions in developing climate-neutral forms of cultural production, SALT. CLAY ROCK. On Nuclear Pasts and Radiant Futures has also been an experiment in producing an extensive transnational research project in a climate-neutral way, in line with the practical and conceptual challenge of thinking about energy futures. This also enables nGbK to position itself more clearly in sustainability discourses and to use its multiplier effect as an art institution.

Artists: Ana Alenso, András Cséfalvay, Krisztina Erdei with Dániel Misota, Csilla Nagy & Rita Süveges, Sonya Schönberger, Marike Schreiber, Katarina Šević, Dominika Trapp, Anna Witt

Participants of the Public Program: bankleer (Karin Kasböck und Christoph Leitner), Sophie Hilbert, Paul Kolling, Gabriela Šaturová, a.o.

nGbK work group: Katalin Erdődi, Marc Herbst, Julia Kurz, Virág Major-Kremer, Vincent Schier

About the Works

Ana Alenso’s work focuses on the former uranium mines of the Ore Mountains in the East of Germany. Interested in the wider geologic understanding of the past and today’s geopolitical landscapes, she examines the significant role these mines and the Soviet-German mining company Wismut played in the race for “nuclear superiority” during the Cold War. Sonya Schönberger deals with how mining intersects with the storage of radioactive waste in the former salt mine of Morsleben, which was transformed into the GDR’s final repository for low and medium-radioactivity waste. Her work connects the particularities of salt with the socio-political situation of this small village located close to the former German-German border.

Meanwhile, Krisztina Erdei and Dániel Misota´s work engages with Bátaapáti, a village in Southwest Hungary that hosts an underground nuclear waste repository since 2011. The artists have created a participatory film with the villagers that evokes historical as well as personal moments by re-enacting stories shared by members of the local community. It speaks about everyday life, personal destinies and desires, in contrast to the grand narratives written by political and economic powers. Interested in the intricacies of science, knowledge, power, and our faith in progress, András Cséfalvay crafts an animated video opera in three acts, set in the underground tunnels of the Bátaapáti repository. Inspired by the story of Prometheus and Percy Shelley’s lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound, his mythological figures interrogate our desire to dominate nature and move from nuclear fission to fusion, in order to achieve the utopian horizon of unlimited energy.

Working in the small village of Boda, one of the possible sites of Hungary’s final repository for high-level radioactive waste, Csilla Nagy and Rita Süveges devised an artist-led field trip as part of SALT. CLAY. ROCK., inviting the audience to a performative-participatory gathering and communal pit-firing session on site. Using this ancient technique to transform clay into ceramics, the artists created shapes and objects inspired by the nuclear fuel rods, which will be stored in the final repository. Drawing on the interdisciplinary field of „nuclear semiotics“, they ask how we can imagine communication with future generations about the location and the toxicity of the nuclear waste repository. Also resonating with this question, Katarina Šević’s artistic and design research deals with nuclear semiotics and the limits of language, meaning and cross-species communication. Her participation in SALT. CLAY. ROCK. is two-fold: she is the author of the project’s visual identity, while her artwork in the exhibition translates the complexity of feelings and facts around nuclear matters into objects, patterns and performative props.

Dominika Trapp explores the relationship of the workers to the nuclear power plant in Paks, Hungary. How do they see the power plant and their role in it? Do they dream about it? Her sensitive painterly work is inspired by the intimate conversations she had with workers on their associations, visions and fears regarding the plant and nuclear energy. Marike Schreiber also investigates nuclear infrastructures, interested in the entanglements of the former GDR’s first nuclear power plant in Rheinsberg—also the first in Germany to be entirely decommissioned—and the Stechlin nature reserve that surrounds it. The Lake Stechlin, famously described in a novel by German realist poet Theodor Fontane, has played an important role in cooling the power plant. The lake’s excellent water quality and biodiversity have been studied by researchers since the late 19th century.

Anna Witt has been doing research in the Wendland region, in the village of Gorleben, which has become synonymous with anti-nuclear resistance in Germany. In her performative and video-based work, she focuses on forms of protest and how they are inscribed into the bodies and biography of activists across generations, while also reflecting on forms of solidarity in the anti-nuclear movement and how it has shaped (West) German left-wing protest and politics.

nGbK am Alex
Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 11/13, 10178 Berlin, 1st floor (access via escalator)
Opening hours: Tue–Sun 12–6 pm, Fri 12–8 pm
Free admission to the exhibition and all events
Accessible with wheelchairs and strollers
Information for visitors is available on ngbk.de

SALT. CLAY. ROCK. is funded by the Zero programme of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation). Funded by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media).

The neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) is funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Community.