Archive of Nuclear Harm
The Archive of Nuclear Harm exhibits, screens, publishes and collects materials on life and death in the nuclear age. We also design and deliver educational programs. Our mission is to create a resource deep into the nuclear future, that is accessible to anyone with an internet connection.
Items of interest include artworks and other cultural artefacts that explore the full range of harms—to bodies and the biosphere—that are inflicted by nuclear weapons, energy, accidents and waste. Since the legacy of the nuclear age must be conceived on timescales of up to one million years, and threatens the continued safe operating conditions of Earth’s biosphere, this will be a memory institution like no other.
The Archive was established in 2012, and is now a part of the Nuclear Futures partnership initiative, a three-year arts and culture program sponsored by the Australia Council for the Arts. Nuclear Futures brings together artists and atomic survivor communities in Australia, Japan, Kazakhstan and the Marshall Islands.
Latest project outputs
N.A.J. Taylor, ‘Manifesto for an Archive of Nuclear Harm’. Submitted for peer review at Unlikely: Journal for Creative Arts in November 2016. [PDF available on request]
Paul Brown, N.A.J. Taylor, and Ellise Barkley (eds.), “Australian Nuclear Culture”. Forthcoming special issue of Unlikely: Journal for Creative Arts as at November 2016. [Including contributions by: James Arvanitakis, Ellise Barkley, Jessie Boylan, Mick Broderick, Adam Broinowski, Paul Brown, Russell Bryant, Teresa Crea, Linda Dement, Merilyn Fairskye, Adrian Glamorgan, Robert (Bo) Jacobs, Luke Harrald, Steve Harrison, Avon Hudson, Ingrid Matthews, Christobel Mattingley, J.D. Mittmann, Nic Mollison, Gordon Murray, Warren (Ebay) Paul, Keith Peters, Elizabeth PO’, John Romeril, Mima Smart OAM, N.A.J. Taylor, John Turpie, and Lynette Wallworth.] [PDF]
N.A.J. Taylor and Robert Jacobs (eds.), Experiencing Hiroshima. Under contract to Routledge’s “War, Politics and Experience” book series edited by Christine Sylvester, to be delivered in December 2016. [Including contributions by: Ran Zwigenberg, Yuki Miyamoto, Thomas Doyle II, Stefanie Fishel, Kathleen Sullivan, Makeda Best, elin o’Hara slavik, Robert del Tredici, Jessica Rapson, Robert Jacobs, Stuart Bender, Adam Broinowski, Erik Ropers, Marcel Quiroz, Imafuku Ryuta, Mick Broderick.] [PDF available on request]
N.A.J. Taylor, Nuclear Deferral, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne, Australia, August 17-September 11, 2016 (with Andrew Hustwaite) and Maxey Museum for Man and Nature, Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA, United States, September 26-28, 2016. [LINK]
N.A.J. Taylor, ‘Nuclear visions: Suffering between living and dying’. Paper presented at the Creative Arts and Nuclear Futures conference, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, August 6-7, 2015. [PDF available on request]
Sponsor/s
O’Donnell Endowed Chair in Global Studies, Whitman College, 2016 ($10,000)
College Academy for Research & Creative Activity, University of Alabama, 2016 ($3,075)
Pozible crowdsourcing, 2016 ($6,421)
Alphaville/Australia Council for the Arts, 2015-16 ($5,000)