Art and Nuclear Power

Volkmar critically analyzes viewer responses to nuclear technology artwork. She describes selected artwork in a manner that engages and educates readers about the historical context of each work…. Volkmar’s message is that through the transformative power of visual art, viewers can be persuaded to think differently about nuclear technology and motivated to create positive change. Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students and faculty. General readers.

* Choice Reviews *

Volkmar’s close reading of artistic responses to nuclear power convincingly uncovers art’s transformative potential, that is, to force the viewer to see and think differently and thereby create conditions for societal change. In Art and Nuclear Power, Volkmar takes the reader on an essentially hopeful journey where she identifies and articulates the selected artworks’ ethical request to the viewer, to engage and care, not only for past damages or future uncertainties, but – most fundamentally – for the vulnerabilities of the present.

-- Anna Storm, Linköping University, Sweden

Anna Volkmar’s exceptional close reading of nuclear artworks makes a vital contribution to understanding how contemporary visual art can help to rethink nuclear technical infrastructures in the twenty-first century. Volkmar deals with the ethical complexity of making art within nuclear landscapes and catastrophes at a time when the industry is focused on the role of art for marking geological waste storage. Without being distracted by the romanticism of deep time, Volkmar keeps focused on the matter in hand: muddling through wicked complexity when dealing with ironic encounters, care and experimentation, and the redistribution of power relations.

-- Ele Carpenter, Umeå Univer