The Half-Life Afterlife

Although situated firmly in the present, The Half-Life Afterlife is an ongoing, evolving and time-travelling sculptural installation/exhibit reflecting on our pioneering and problematic human-generated nuclear activities from the vantage point of an unspecified and undefined post-nuclear future. It assumes the form of a collection of ancient looking bentonite clay objects, recently discovered in the vicinity of Gloucestershire Airport which was thought to have become the site of a Geological Disposal Facility or GDF where the UK’s most hazardous and long-lived nuclear waste was eventually buried, deep underground.

Possibly created as radioactive waste burial charms these found objects have been subject to speculative research methods fusing nuclear fact and fiction before being catalogued and displayed in a very human attempt to imbue them with cultural significance and meaning as future nuclear artefacts.

Deliberately wide-ranging in scope although with a UK centric focus, The Half-Life Afterlife is conceived as an easily accessible and occasionally humorous storytelling device through which to stimulate thoughts and conversation around the physical and cultural legacies of nuclear power, weapons and waste.

Within a conference/symposium environment it would take the form of a 15-20 minute oral presentation with accompanying powerpoint/pdf slide show.

In lieu of an oral presentation it can also be issued as a 10/20 page illustrated booklet.

https://nuclearinformationcentre.org.uk/The-Half-Life-Afterlife