Papers by Anna Volkmar
Leiden University Library, Apr 4, 2019
Why should we look at art when we talk about nuclear power? Nuclear power, military and civilian,... more Why should we look at art when we talk about nuclear power? Nuclear power, military and civilian, has been framed as a solution many times: a solution to end war and sustain global peace, a solution for growing energy demands in rich countries, and more recently, a solution to climate change. All of these solutions soon produced a number of new problems, or turned into problems themselves, contributing to the wicked complexity of the techno-human condition. Yet, it is a mistake to turn away from complexity and seek answers in the form of certainties. After all, the ‘solutions’ listed above are a product of creating certainties where there are none, of trying to overcome complexity and ambiguity.In this study, I argue that art is relevant to the nuclear debate not despite, but because the answers it offers to the societal questions raised by nuclear technologies suggest other problems. Drawing on Braden R. Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz’s notion of ‘intelligent muddling’ as a strategy to navigate the techno-human condition, I show through a series of close readings of recent artistic responses to nuclear energy production and its ‘by-products’ that art points towards ways of muddling through nuclear complexity.Modern and Contemporary Studie
In this article, I explore the question of how art may help us to map and, indeed, inhabit the pr... more In this article, I explore the question of how art may help us to map and, indeed, inhabit the problematic subject position that the Anthropocene confronts us with. I focus on the landscape photography collected in Jurgen Nefzger’s Fluffy Clouds (2010) and its use of irony to obstruct the power dynamics at work in traditional landscape aesthetics. I suggest that Fluffy Clouds helps us to think subjectivity in the Anthropocene from a non-unitary position, i.e. a position that is not based on notions of individuality and identity, but is by default relational. My reading will be helped by Ernst van Alphen’s interpretation of perspective as a subject-constituting device and Paul de Man’s notion of the twofold, ironic self.
Authors: Zijlmans, Kitty; Vrancken, Kristof; Görgen, Carolin; Decaudin, Maxime; Zeeuw, T. de; Cro... more Authors: Zijlmans, Kitty; Vrancken, Kristof; Görgen, Carolin; Decaudin, Maxime; Zeeuw, T. de; Crocoll, Natacha; Mavrokordopoulou, Kyveli; Lelik, Timea Andrea
kundstlicht, 2019
POST ATOMIC: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN ALISON SPERLING AND ANNA VOLKMAR WITH A VISUAL RESPONSE BY DO... more POST ATOMIC: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN ALISON SPERLING AND ANNA VOLKMAR WITH A VISUAL RESPONSE BY DONALD WEBER / Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou & Ruby de Vos
In this article, I explore the question of how art may help us to map and, indeed, inhabit the pr... more In this article, I explore the question of how art may help us to map and, indeed, inhabit the problematic subject position that the Anthropocene confronts us with. I focus on the landscape photography collected in Jürgen Nefzger’s "Fluffy Clouds" (2010) and its use of irony to obstruct the power dynamics at work in traditional landscape aesthetics. I suggest that Fluffy Clouds helps us to think subjectivity in the Anthropocene from a non-unitary position, i.e. a position that is not based on notions of individuality and identity, but is by default relational. My reading will be helped by Ernst van Alphen’s interpretation of perspective as a subject-constituting device and Paul de Man’s notion of the twofold, ironic self.
MA Thesis, Leiden University
This study seeks to problematize the claim that in the age of man-made environmental disasters th... more This study seeks to problematize the claim that in the age of man-made environmental disasters the world as a concept has become obsolete. This claim has recently been raised, among others, by the object-oriented ontologist Timothy Morton and is directed specifically against the influential conceptualization of world by Martin Heidegger. Morton bases his claim on the assumption that the presumably distancing notion of world has nothing to say about the perceptual shifts occurring in the increasing physical intimacy between human and non-human entities. This intimacy becomes strikingly visible in ecological crises, such as the nuclear aftermath of the Fukushima disaster of March 2011.
The aim of this research is to critically reassess the Heideggerian concepts of world and worlding, in order to test their capacity as analytical tools to trace and better understand the multilayered shifts in perception occurring in the material and/or discursive encounter with nuclear fallout. The subject matter of this study are three artistic responses to the nuclear aftermath of Fukushima.
The analysis provided considerable evidence supporting the analytical poductivity of the concepts of world and worlding. All three case studies articulate a disintegration of familiar structures in the semiotic presence of nuclear fallout, which could productively be conceptualized as instances of de-worlding. Further, this conceptualization helped to identify two relevant shifts in perception that are related to nuclear fallout: the re-materialization and complexification of radioactivity in the nuclear discourse, and the denial of human mastery over non-human beings. Moreover, alternative ways of showing, seeing, and engaging in the nuclear event of Fukushima are offered by the artworks, which again, happened to productively converge with Heidegger’s concept of world and related notions. However, the analysis has also shown that, for an ecocritical reading of world to be exhaustive, Heidegger’s phenomenology stops short in central aspects.
Blog posts by Anna Volkmar
This blog post shares some impressions from an excursion with the Environmental Humanities Center... more This blog post shares some impressions from an excursion with the Environmental Humanities Center (VU) to the HADES underground research laboratory for the storage of nuclear waste in Mol, Belgium, and the art exhibition 'Perpetual Uncertainty' in Hasselt, Belgium, on nuclear culture.
In public discourse the nuclear usually oscillates between the uncanny and the sublime, that is, ... more In public discourse the nuclear usually oscillates between the uncanny and the sublime, that is, the shockingly close (e.g. radioactive particles inside my body) and the mightily distant (e.g. a nuclear explosion). To designate the middle ground, the " space of care " as the curator of the show Ele Carpenter puts it, and perhaps find a language to speak about the title-giving perpetual uncertainty that governs this space, is the objective that was set for this exhibition. If we want to better understand the nuclear condition that we are all part of, we also need to address political, social, aesthetic questions, because science doesn't have all the answers
The post can be accessed here: http://www.leidenartsinsocietyblog.nl/articles/touring-the-chernob... more The post can be accessed here: http://www.leidenartsinsocietyblog.nl/articles/touring-the-chernobyl-exclusion-zone
The consistent media coverage of the Chernobyl exclusion zone over the last decade has helped to substantiate the narrative of Nature reclaiming the contaminated land, using a potent combination of scientific authority and photographs attesting to the zone’s ‘thriving wildlife’ (usually featuring portraits of iconic mammals such as the endangered Przewalski’s horse).
Rather than joining the general cheers about the positive turn this story appears to have taken, this series of blogposts aims to be a critical comment on the politics of post-nuclear nature.
Call for Papers-Seminar by Anna Volkmar
This workshop comes as part of the Nuclear Waste Weeks at the Enviromental Humanities Center at t... more This workshop comes as part of the Nuclear Waste Weeks at the Enviromental Humanities Center at the VU, Amsterdam and aims to bring together PhD students from various disciplines that share a common interest in nuclear waste and/or deep time.
Conference Presentations by Anna Volkmar
In his book Hyperobjects (2013), object-oriented philosopher Timothy Morton suggests that the eco... more In his book Hyperobjects (2013), object-oriented philosopher Timothy Morton suggests that the ecological crisis is characterized by an uncompromising intimacy with so-called ‘hyperobjects’, i.e. things beyond human grasp like climate change or ionizing radiation. This intimacy strictly erases any physical distance, since we are always already in the object. As a consequence, “hyperobjects compel us to think ecologically” (55), which is to say, they compel us to “attune” to the nonhuman (149). Morton defines attunement as precisely the way “how the mind becomes congruent with an object” (171). And in art he sees the potential and even necessity to provide a space for that. In this talk I sought to explore the productivity of Morton’s approach for the case of radioactivity by offering a close reading of the essay film The Radiant. The film explores the nuclear aftermath of the Fukushima disaster of March 2011, following various paths in time and space to establish this nuclear event as a multi-layered cultural-political phenomenon. However, privileging aesthetic experimentation over narrative transparency, or, for that matter, accumulating data, The Radiant indeed qualifies as a space of attunement in Morton’s sense. Specifically, I argued that the film establishes a dialogical disposition between the spectator and nuclear fallout, in which noise is turned into the signifying part of the message that is being exchanged. Thinking radioactivity through noise, then, provides an alternative understanding of radioactivity that confronts dominant (scientific) modes of knowing. In this sense, attunement becomes an alternative way of knowing that privileges the ‘uncoded’ material presence of an object over its discursive one.
The idea of a 'radioactive wilderness' has become a potent visual trope in landscape photography.... more The idea of a 'radioactive wilderness' has become a potent visual trope in landscape photography. In this proposed paper I engage with photographs of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, a closed-off area that was created by the Soviet government in response to the nuclear disaster in 1986. Since it has been opened for tourism in 2002, the zone has been undergoing a radical revaluation from a 'nuclear wasteland' to a 'pristine wildlife reserve.' Photography has played a major role in this process, raising questions not only about the political work it does in the remediation of the zone, but also how the photographic image feeds into our imagination of post-nuclear nature. While zone photography certainly helps to remind us of our nuclear legacy, it has become part and parcel of a larger, rather problematic discursive legacy that William Cronon referred to as the 'wilderness paradox:' the dualistic vision that places the human entirely outside the natural, nurturing effectively the false hope of an escape from responsibility. As plans to transform the exclusion zone into a biosphere reserve are well under way in order to “forget about this problem for 100 years,” to quote Ukraine's minister of ecology and natural resources Igor Shevchenko, a critical debate on the tropes that inform such lines of reasoning seems more urgent than ever. Drawing on Susan Sontag's critique of documentary photography, this paper discusses not only the socio-political implications of zone photography. It also explores the possibilities of this medium to rewrite the visual narrative of a 'radioactive wilderness' in ways that privilege a relational ethics of wildness over the aesthetic detachment of wilderness, using Donald Weber's photo series Post Atomic (2005-2013) as my case study. Post Atomic is an intimate and surprisingly playful portray of human life in and around the exclusion zone that challenges the romanticised idea of a radioactive wilderness. I suggest that works like this help us, within their own range of possibilities, to critically reflect on the set of images we have at our disposal to think nature in a damaged world.
Drafts by Anna Volkmar
This essay discusses the art installation Plants Liberation Forest (2013) by the Dutch artist Ton... more This essay discusses the art installation Plants Liberation Forest (2013) by the Dutch artist Ton Matton under the premise to analyze manifestations of utopian and dystopian thinking within the supposedly anti-utopian age of liberal capitalism. The analysis is framed by Ruth Levitas’ conception of the “transgressive utopia”, David Pepper’s critical reception of Levitas’ model in the context of ecological utopianism, and Garry Potter’s dialectics of dystopia. Also, Frederic Jameson’s observations on the specific temporality of utopian projections are considered. Special attention is being paid to the function of garbage in representing and negotiating dystopian positions. The main outcome of this study is that Matton gives constructive impulses how to overcome the dehumanizing and ecologically destructive dystopia of liberal capitalism. However, Matton’s approach might not be radical enough in the sense that he relies on the seductive power of aesthetics and thereby misses the fact that mere constructivism has repeatedly failed in ecological debates. In sum, Plants Liberation Forest seems to illustrate Levitas’ hypothesis that the function of utopia in late modernity has shifted from transformation to critique.
This essay explores the empirical qualities of noise in The Radiant and it’s mind-boggling implic... more This essay explores the empirical qualities of noise in The Radiant and it’s mind-boggling implications of what it actually means to have entered the Anthropocene as both a geological epoch and as a concept in which “nonhumans make decisive contact with humans” (Morton, 2013: 14).
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Papers by Anna Volkmar
The aim of this research is to critically reassess the Heideggerian concepts of world and worlding, in order to test their capacity as analytical tools to trace and better understand the multilayered shifts in perception occurring in the material and/or discursive encounter with nuclear fallout. The subject matter of this study are three artistic responses to the nuclear aftermath of Fukushima.
The analysis provided considerable evidence supporting the analytical poductivity of the concepts of world and worlding. All three case studies articulate a disintegration of familiar structures in the semiotic presence of nuclear fallout, which could productively be conceptualized as instances of de-worlding. Further, this conceptualization helped to identify two relevant shifts in perception that are related to nuclear fallout: the re-materialization and complexification of radioactivity in the nuclear discourse, and the denial of human mastery over non-human beings. Moreover, alternative ways of showing, seeing, and engaging in the nuclear event of Fukushima are offered by the artworks, which again, happened to productively converge with Heidegger’s concept of world and related notions. However, the analysis has also shown that, for an ecocritical reading of world to be exhaustive, Heidegger’s phenomenology stops short in central aspects.
Blog posts by Anna Volkmar
Plans to turn part of the Chernobyl exclusion zone into a nature reserve are in the pipeline. But what does it actually try to preserve? A queer ecosystem or merely a fantasy of resilient nature?
The consistent media coverage of the Chernobyl exclusion zone over the last decade has helped to substantiate the narrative of Nature reclaiming the contaminated land, using a potent combination of scientific authority and photographs attesting to the zone’s ‘thriving wildlife’ (usually featuring portraits of iconic mammals such as the endangered Przewalski’s horse).
Rather than joining the general cheers about the positive turn this story appears to have taken, this series of blogposts aims to be a critical comment on the politics of post-nuclear nature.
Call for Papers-Seminar by Anna Volkmar
Conference Presentations by Anna Volkmar
Drafts by Anna Volkmar
The aim of this research is to critically reassess the Heideggerian concepts of world and worlding, in order to test their capacity as analytical tools to trace and better understand the multilayered shifts in perception occurring in the material and/or discursive encounter with nuclear fallout. The subject matter of this study are three artistic responses to the nuclear aftermath of Fukushima.
The analysis provided considerable evidence supporting the analytical poductivity of the concepts of world and worlding. All three case studies articulate a disintegration of familiar structures in the semiotic presence of nuclear fallout, which could productively be conceptualized as instances of de-worlding. Further, this conceptualization helped to identify two relevant shifts in perception that are related to nuclear fallout: the re-materialization and complexification of radioactivity in the nuclear discourse, and the denial of human mastery over non-human beings. Moreover, alternative ways of showing, seeing, and engaging in the nuclear event of Fukushima are offered by the artworks, which again, happened to productively converge with Heidegger’s concept of world and related notions. However, the analysis has also shown that, for an ecocritical reading of world to be exhaustive, Heidegger’s phenomenology stops short in central aspects.
Plans to turn part of the Chernobyl exclusion zone into a nature reserve are in the pipeline. But what does it actually try to preserve? A queer ecosystem or merely a fantasy of resilient nature?
The consistent media coverage of the Chernobyl exclusion zone over the last decade has helped to substantiate the narrative of Nature reclaiming the contaminated land, using a potent combination of scientific authority and photographs attesting to the zone’s ‘thriving wildlife’ (usually featuring portraits of iconic mammals such as the endangered Przewalski’s horse).
Rather than joining the general cheers about the positive turn this story appears to have taken, this series of blogposts aims to be a critical comment on the politics of post-nuclear nature.