This summer, visual art is taking over Project Arts Centre with one of our most ambitious exhibitions to date. Riddle of the Burial Grounds puzzles over signs, forms and communication, motivated by one of the major problems facing our planet – the markings and warnings around nuclear burial sites.
Stored in man-made concrete-clad tunnels deep within mountains or in repurposed salt mines, radioactive matter is being buried that will continue to have the potential to create catastrophic disaster deep into the future, into a period of time we can barely perceive of, yet alone imagine.
We are entering an era that is defined by our impact on earth – the Anthropocene – an era in which human actions have become the dominant force of change on the planet. Through sculpture, film, photography, documentary, fiction, science-fiction, history, landscapes and imagined futures, all animated by the apparatus of theatre, Riddle of the Burial Grounds attempts to conceive of a time in which language, signs and forms will be beyond our current comprehension. How do we communicate beyond the decaying half-life of our current knowledge? And what will we leave behind?
The exhibition will be accompanied by a public lecture, presented in partnership with the Science Gallery, by American historian of science Peter Galison, followed by a conversation with film-maker Robb Moss about their recent collaboration to research and produce Containment, shown as part of Riddle of the Burial Grounds.
Riddle of the Burial Grounds runs at Project Arts Centre from 10 June to 1 August 2015.
Artists: Lara Almarcegui (ES/NL), Rossella Biscotti (IT/NL), Simon Boudvin (FR), Matthew Buckingham (US), Mariana Castillo Deball (DE/MX), Dorothy Cross (IE), Regina de Miguel (ES), Harun Farocki (DE), Peter Galison & Robb Moss (US), Stéphane Béna Hanly (IE), Tracy Hanna (IE), Mikhail Karikis (GK/UK) & Uriel Orlow (CH/UK), Nicholas Mangan (AU), Tejal Shah (IN)
Project Arts Centre is supported by the Arts Council and Dublin City Council. Riddle of the Burial Grounds is presented in partnership with the Mondriaan Fund, the Goethe-Institut Dublin and the French Embassy in Ireland, with further thanks to Dublin City Council and The LAB, and all the lenders to the exhibition.