OPEN CARE is a set of artefacts which propose a social thought experiment: what if nuclear waste were a very personal responsibility and thus part of our everyday life and our cities? It is an imaginary system for distributed nuclear waste storage which implicates us intimately in a much longer swathe of the future than most of us can imagine easily. The waste is encapsulated in steel pellets mounted in a bronze disk. An electroscope, gold leaf, an electrostatic rod and fur to charge it are provided along with instructions to check the level of radioactivity periodically, from generation to generation, to ascertain whether the waste of which you are custodian has become safe “or if you and your descendants need to continue to care about it.” Rendering the huge timescale of radioactive decay into more meaningful units of lifetimes opens the question of collective care from a fresh perspective.
OPEN CARE is a set of artefacts which propose a social thought experiment: what if nuclear waste were a very personal responsibility and thus part of our everyday life and our cities? It is an imaginary system for distributed nuclear waste storage which implicates us intimately in a much longer swathe of the future than most of us can imagine easily. The waste is encapsulated in steel pellets mounted in a bronze disk. An electroscope, gold leaf, an electrostatic rod and fur to charge it are provided along with instructions to check the level of radioactivity periodically, from generation to generation, to ascertain whether the waste of which you are custodian has become safe “or if you and your descendants need to continue to care about it.” Rendering the huge timescale of radioactive decay into more meaningful units of lifetimes opens the question of collective care from a fresh perspective.
Erich Berger and Mari Keto, INHERITANCE, 2016
INHERITANCE consists precious jewellery, a necklace, earing and a broche, which are radioactive and therefore rendered practically and symbolically unwearable for deep time, until the radionuclide transmute naturally into a stable and non radioactive isotope of lead. Together with an electromechanical device to determine the remaining radioactivity the jewellery is stored in a concrete container which is build to endure over a vast amount of time. With these items the story goes that each time the jewellery is handed over from one generation to the next, the ritual of measurement determines if the jewellery can finally be brought in use and fulfill its promise of wealth and identity or if it has to be stored away until the next generation.