BLURRING THE LINES
BLURRING THE LINES

Anastasia Mityukova

Project Iceworm

EDITION

2018, Winner

school

École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (ECAL)
Lausanne, Switzerland

links

anastasiamityukova.ch ↗

The Iceworm Project exposes the destruction of the landscape and a population of Thune village, Greenland. The Leporello presents the coastal area of the military base. Google Maps cannot map the site at once, because of the very changing climate, the landscape is a mosaic of seasons: sometimes it is summer, sometimes winter. We then see the probable consequences of future global warming. The cyanotype shows the extent of the B-52 crash – the black trace that extended over 11 km was the fuel oil burned mixed with plutonium.
The video, of 2’30’’, is elaborated from American archives of the first nuclear tests. The army was then building Potemkin villages to test the destructive capacity of its bombs. The soundtrack consists of traditional songs from the Thule village, recorded by Jean Malaurie in 1960, at the same time as the crash. The blackened documents, using a passe-partout, show how the American government wanted to silence the case: by deleting the term “Nuclear”, they thought it was settled. Yet all the text contains clues, which, once put forward, attest to the importance and nature of the accident.
The book “Project Iceworm” of 600 pages is the collection of archive images found on the construction of the base, put into perspective with images made by Inuit, living on the spot, collected in 2018 via social networks. The pages are bright yellow, to mark the latency and dangerousness of this nuclear waste that can arise at any time.
“Iceworm Project” deals with the destruction of a preserved place where about 500 people lived: Thule. This village, the northernmost village in Greenland, was the position chosen by the American government in the 1950s to build an airport and a military base (Operation Blue Jay) with the agreement of the Danish government.
In 1967, a B-52 plane crashed on the ice 20 km from the Inuit village. It carried four nuclear bombs 1200 times more powerful than Hiroshima’s. Three explode, one melted the ice cap and sunk in the ocean and is still not found today. Environmental pollution is considerable. The Danish government, which had signed an anti-nuclear treaty, is being singled out. Once again, it is the local population that suffers the most: cancers, pollution of fauna and flora. To date, neither the Danish nor the US governments recognise their responsibilities.

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Anastasia Mityukova

Project Iceworm

EDITION

2018, Winner

school

École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (ECAL)
Lausanne, Switzerland

links

anastasiamityukova.ch ↗

The Iceworm Project exposes the destruction of the landscape and a population of Thune village, Greenland. The Leporello presents the coastal area of the military base. Google Maps cannot map the site at once, because of the very changing climate, the landscape is a mosaic of seasons: sometimes it is summer, sometimes winter. We then see the probable consequences of future global warming. The cyanotype shows the extent of the B-52 crash – the black trace that extended over 11 km was the fuel oil burned mixed with plutonium.
The video, of 2’30’’, is elaborated from American archives of the first nuclear tests. The army was then building Potemkin villages to test the destructive capacity of its bombs. The soundtrack consists of traditional songs from the Thule village, recorded by Jean Malaurie in 1960, at the same time as the crash. The blackened documents, using a passe-partout, show how the American government wanted to silence the case: by deleting the term “Nuclear”, they thought it was settled. Yet all the text contains clues, which, once put forward, attest to the importance and nature of the accident.
The book “Project Iceworm” of 600 pages is the collection of archive images found on the construction of the base, put into perspective with images made by Inuit, living on the spot, collected in 2018 via social networks. The pages are bright yellow, to mark the latency and dangerousness of this nuclear waste that can arise at any time.
“Iceworm Project” deals with the destruction of a preserved place where about 500 people lived: Thule. This village, the northernmost village in Greenland, was the position chosen by the American government in the 1950s to build an airport and a military base (Operation Blue Jay) with the agreement of the Danish government.
In 1967, a B-52 plane crashed on the ice 20 km from the Inuit village. It carried four nuclear bombs 1200 times more powerful than Hiroshima’s. Three explode, one melted the ice cap and sunk in the ocean and is still not found today. Environmental pollution is considerable. The Danish government, which had signed an anti-nuclear treaty, is being singled out. Once again, it is the local population that suffers the most: cancers, pollution of fauna and flora. To date, neither the Danish nor the US governments recognise their responsibilities.

← Previous Talent

Next Talent →