Nuclear Deferral

Nuclear Deferral: an installation by O’Donnell Visiting Educator in Nuclear Humanities, N.A.J. Taylor,

presented by the Whitman College Global Studies Initiative and the Politics Department.

With the detonation of the first nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, we irreversibly entered the
nuclear age. When people think about our shared nuclear future today, they tend to employ one
of two, competing, narratives. In one vision we humans—and perhaps everything—is violated
and dies. In the other, life thrives because Earth is either in a state of nuclear peace or is
denuclearized. Nuclear Deferral intervenes in this discourse by bringing into view a third and
fourth possible future, in which nuclear harm is inflicted on Earth and its inhabitants from either
above or below. On at least one of these nuclear endings we can be certain.

On Monday, September 26, 12-4 pm, Taylor’s Nuclear Deferral will commemorate the U.N.
International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons with Commemorating Nuclear
Fear, an on-demand screening of three short-films that examine the continued pain, suffering
and vulnerability of atomic survivor communities in Australia.

Collisions (2016) [18 minutes] employs virtual reality technology to set up an encounter between
the viewer and Nyarri Morgan, of the Martu tribe from remote central Australia. As Collisions
reveals, Morgan’s first encounter with Western culture was not until the British conducted their
nuclear tests in the remote Western Australian Pilbara desert in the 1950s.

10 Minutes to Midnight (2015) [24 minutes] and Ngurini (Searching) (2015) [20 minutes] are
companion films about the legacy of Britain’s atomic weapons testing in Australia through the
1950s and 60s. 10 Minutes to Midnight integrates original digital artwork, video media, dynamic
sound design, and archival footage as a means of evaluating British nuclear colonialism. Ngurini
(Searching) is a culmination of a community-based arts project with Pitjantjatjara Anangu from
Yalata and Oak Valley, who were relocated from traditional lands and the Ooldea Mission from
1952 when Britain commenced nuclear testing in South Australia.

For more information about O'Donnell Visiting Educators in Nuclear Humanities, please visit:
http://www.nuclearhumanities.org