Description
“There is something about the invisibility of radiation, and its potential to kill silently. We have good reason to fear what we cannot see, or taste, or hear, or touch. If our senses offer no guide to the scale of the risk, we must assume the best or fear the worst.” – Fred Pearce, science and environmental writer.
Restricted Residence examines the relocation of Japanese citizens to Namie and Iitate, two towns exposed to extreme radioactivity following the catastrophic leak at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. In 2017, despite inconclusive scientific consensus of the long-term effects of radiation in the area, the government began to reduce the exclusion zones and heavily financially incentivise residents to return to what were formerly bustling towns. Now, the area is eerily empty, with just a few hundred people brave enough to return. With the reactor still unrepaired and uninhabitable radiation hotspots scattered across the landscape, some believe these areas will not be safe for 50 years or longer.
Restricted Residence employs thermal technology often used in medicine and surveying, to render the everyday landscapes surreal and inverted, it attempts to visualise the potential hidden stresses on those living in an altered environment, and examine the condition known as Radiophobia: the fear ionizing radiation and its long term psychological effects.
The work blurs the lines of genre and questions what a document is and can be.
