Assistant Professor Charles Stankievech, director of the Visual Studies program at the Daniels Faculty, is participating in a symposium in Toronto this weekend on “the troubled legacy of the atomic age in art, photography, and contemporary culture." The University of Toronto is among the conference supporters.

Entitled “Through Post-Atomic Eyes,” the symposium poses the question: “How do lens-based practices help shed light on the legacy of atomic culture in the twenty-first century, and how has this legacy shaped contemporary intersections of photography, nuclear industries, and military technocultures?”

Stankievech is presenting the talk: “An Archeology of Radioactivity: Supercritical Decay”

From the symposium's website:

In the current debate as to where/when to pound the official golden spike in a particular global geological stratum to define the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch, two outer limits have been delineated: the first is the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean and the start of the Columbian Exchange due to colonialism, while the second is the first nuclear explosion. Both of these events were precipitated by Italian “explorers”: Christopher Columbus in 1492 and Enrico Fermi in 1942. The latter occurred on the shores of the Great Lakes in North America at a site called the Chicago Pile-1 on 2 December 1942. Here, Fermi initiated the first artificial nuclear chain reaction in scientific history, sub rosa, the Manhattan Project, and at exactly 15:25 under the university football stadium, the pile “went critical” (meaning it reached a self-sustaining reaction). After the experiment was observed, Arthur Compton, head of the laboratory, telephoned James Conant, chairman of the National Defense Research Committee. Fully conscious that atomic weaponry was the next phase of their work, the men’s conversation (in impromptu code) possessed a perverse irony. Using a historic colonial scenario, they coded the success of an experiment that would lead to the dawn of the new colonial era:

Compton: The Italian navigator has landed in the New World.
Conant: How were the natives?
Compton: Very friendly.

The conference schedule includes a screening of Stankievech’s short film Zeno’s Phantasies, among three others. Each of the short films “engage the viewer in understanding the nuclear genie.” The films are being co-presented with Planet in Focus.

Organized by Claudette Lauzon of OCAD University and John O’Brian or the University of British Columbia, “Through Post-Atomic Eyes” is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Ontario, OCAD University, the University of Toronto, and the University of British Columbia.