The core of the issue: Nuclear energy

Technological developments have always had an impact on the human body. In the seconds after the atomic blast at Hiroshima in 1945, human bodies - warm, fleshy, animate, became shadows.  In one quiet moment, in one huge white flash of light, they were dematerialized, their corporeal existence mere trace. At the epicentre of the explosion technology had rendered the body as pure surface.

 

Imprint of a person dissolved by the atomic bomb. Image sourced from http://www.gensuikin.org/english/photo.html

The phantom body as absent signifier of a once physical presence, haunted the ruinous city after the devastation and for an entire generation of young artists who had been confronted with the appalling possibility of atomic catastrophe embodied in the photographs of Hiroshima, a new awareness of life supporting energies became imperative.

 Klein, Hiroshima (1961) image sourced from http://radicalart.info/destruction/ArtificialDisasters/AtomBomb/index.html

Yves Klein’s Hiroshima (1961) speaks directly about the dematerialization of the human body brought about by heat destruction, whilst simultaneously depicting those bodies as eternally animated. The 300,000 people who died in 1945 as a result of the USA dropping atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima are gone, but what lives on in the minds of the Japanese people is the fear of nuclear radiation.  Memories of the past fuse into fears in the present. Many alive still remember the horror, many alive are still suffering the affects of radiation, including Leukemia, cancer, tumors, horrendous bodily burns and psychological scarring that will be with them all of their lives. Most who suffered from that 1945 event have already died and with them the memory; but it resurfaces for Japanese people amidst fears of a radiation leak if the Fukushima nuclear power plant goes to meltdown. And here, in Australia, with our desire for 'clean' energy  the debate has turned to the notion of whether we should consider building nuclear power plants. With our abundance of solar, wind and tidal resources to draw upon we may never have to go down the nuclear power route, but there are those who are still considering it; there are those who would build nuclear power plants and leave the possibility of  risk, injury and death for a future generation.