The Nuclear Culture Sourcebook launches 18th October, ICA London, and features work by Chris Oakley and other members of the X-10 group.

The Nuclear Culture Source Book is a resource and introduction to nuclear culture, one of the most urgent themes within contemporary art and society, charting the ways in which art and philosophy contribute to a cultural understanding of the nuclear. The book brings together contemporary art and ideas investigating the nuclear Anthropocene, nuclear sites and materiality, along with important questions of radiological inheritance, nuclear modernity and the philosophical concept of radiation as a hyperobject.

Contributing writers: Peter C van Wyck; Gabrielle Hecht; Timothy Morton; Jahnavi Phalkey; Noi Sawaragi; Eiko Honda; Susan Schuppli; Victor Gama; Di McDonald and Nicola Triscott.

Contributing artists: James Acord; Shuji Akagi; Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway; Erich Berger; Chim↑Pom; Thomson & Craighead; Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson; Gair Dunlop; emptyset; Merilyn Fairskye; Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani; Victor Gama; Joy Garnett; Giuliano Garonzi; Grand Guignol Mirai; Dave Griffiths; Annie Grove-White; Helen Grove-White; Isao Hashimoto; Hilda Hellström; Cornelia Hesse-Honegger; Hollington and Kyprianou; Martin Howse; Pierre Huyghe; Ai Ikeda; Robert Jacobs and Mick Broderick; Miyamoto Katsuhiro; Yoi Kawakubo; Bridget Kennedy; Yves Klein; Erika Kobayashi; Karen Kramer; Sandra Lahire; Jessica Lloyd-Jones; Veronika Lukasova; David Mabb; Cécile Massart; Eva and Franco Mattes; William Morris; Yoshinori Niwa; Takashi Noguchi; Chris Oakley; Uriel Orlow; Trevor Paglen; Yelena Popova; Monica Ross; Susan Schuppli; Taryn Simon; smudge studio; Isabella Streffen; Shimpei Takeda; Nobuaki Takekawa; Kota Takeuchi; Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola; Robin Tarbet; Suzanne Treister; Alana Tyson; Mark Aerial Waller; Andy Weir; Jane and Louise Wilson; Louise K Wilson; and Ken + Julia Yonetani.

Nuclear power is and has been a frequent presence in the news and is particularly pertinent within current debates surrounding pressures of energy supply around the world. The artist group X-10 bring together the fruits of two years working together around the closure and decommissioning of Wylfa on Anglesey, the last nuclear power station in Wales and the last and largest of the Magnox stations. The final shutdown in December 2015, marked the end of an era for the local community and brings to the fore the question mark over the next generation of nuclear power.

The artists in X-10 present a range of compelling responses through video, photography, sound, sculpture, installation and alternative photographic processes to try and come to terms with the conundrums of nuclear power, our future energy requirements and environmental concerns. The group, who practice both in Wales and England, worked closely together through visits to Wylfa and ensuring a process of continual dialogue. Each artist has made an individual response to the physical and energetic presence of the power station, the future legacy for the Anglesey site and to the complex associations of nuclear power.

Merging art, science and technology the show presents new questions and thoughts to the nuclear debate. The works present a breadth of ideas such as responses to the often-hidden and somewhat mysterious physical actions of the reactor, the sensitive issue around containment of radioactive waste and to the wider associations of nuclear power. The artists are interested in looking at the site’s physical, political and cultural contexts as well as surveying the actual landscape and its geographical situation.

X-10 are Alana Tyson, Annie Grove-White, Ant Dickinson, Bridget Kennedy, Chris Oakley, Helen Grove-White, Jessica Lloyd-Jones, Robin Tarbet, Teresa Paiva, Tim Skinner

Supported by the Arts Council of Wales.

Globale: Global Control and Censorship, ZKM Karlsruhe, has now been extended until August 7, 2016

The show features The Catalogue by Chris Oakley.

Datacide speculates on the future of data and digital culture. A sculptural installation, created from the remains of destroyed Hard Disk Drives, both reflects upon the meaning of data in a digitised culture and considers a possible scenario where technology has become irrelevant and is reduced to its material qualities alone. It is also intended as a reflection on the consumption cycle quietly inherent in digital culture, and the downstream disposal of electronic waste in the developing world.

The work questions our relationship with data itself, inviting reflection on the connections between data and our physical world. At the same time the work forms a kind of mausoleum, where the data has departed the physical media that housed it. In an increasingly cloud-based, online and remote world of digital media that we inhabit, we operate under the illusion that data has been somehow freed from the need to exist in a physical location (as magnetic recordings) on the surface of a hard drive.

In Datacide punched and shredded hard drives are used as materials analogous to those employed in landscaping and early stone construction. These ‘raw’ materials are used as building blocks to create a form reminiscent of a conical cairn, a structure widely used as a location marker from prehistory to the present.

As an artist with a history of working primarily in video and video installation, this work investigates sculptural installation as a new approach to some of the themes implicit in his work for a number of years. The idea for the piece is inspired in part by reflection on the future of much of  the artist’s work to date, much of which exists solely as digital files on hard drives.

Datacide open 6th February 2016, 5-8pm, Oreil Davies Gallery, Newtown, Powys, UK.

http://www.orieldavies.org/en/exhibition/datacide

Nuclear power is and has been a frequent presence in the news and is particularly pertinent within current debates surrounding pressures of energy supply around the world. The artist group X-10 bring together the fruits of two years working together around the closure and decommissioning of Wylfa on Anglesey, the last nuclear power station in Wales and the last and largest of the Magnox stations. The final shutdown in December 2015, marked the end of an era for the local community and brings to the fore the question mark over the next generation of nuclear power.

The artists in X-10 present a range of compelling responses through video, photography, sound, sculpture, installation and alternative photographic processes to try and come to terms with the conundrums of nuclear power, our future energy requirements and environmental concerns. The group, who practice both in Wales and England, worked closely together through visits to Wylfa and ensuring a process of continual dialogue. Each artist has made an individual response to the physical and energetic presence of the power station, the future legacy for the Anglesey site and to the complex associations of nuclear power.

Merging art, science and technology the show presents new questions and thoughts to the nuclear debate. The works present a breadth of ideas such as responses to the often-hidden and somewhat mysterious physical actions of the reactor, the sensitive issue around containment of radioactive waste and to the wider associations of nuclear power. The artists are interested in looking at the site’s physical, political and cultural contexts as well as surveying the actual landscape and its geographical situation.

X-10 are Alana Tyson, Annie Grove-White, Ant Dickinson, Bridget Kennedy, Chris Oakley, Helen Grove-White, Jessica Lloyd-Jones, Robin Tarbet, Teresa Paiva, Tim Skinner

Supported by the Arts Council of Wales.

Power in the Land. Opens 6th Feb, Oriel Davies, Newtown, Powys, 5-8pm.

The Catalogue by Chris Oakley to screen in the  programme UndoFilm – Plattform für Experimentelles Bewegtbild Köln präsentiert… Subversive Strategien im Kino, 18/12/15, Cologne, Germany. Details here.