An Open-Air Art Exhibition You Never Can Visit in Fukushima
Four and half years after the blast at Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, Fukushima still has some difficult-to-return zones of high radiological dosage. There is no knowing when these areas are made habitable.
Now, in four of such areas in house yards and work plants, expressive art pieces are exhibited each with a transparent flag designed on a motif of "Wind" hoisted high. Where they are is kept secret and when the restrictions will be lifted is left undecided. It's a really grand open-air exhibition of modern arts never to be visited. Why an exhibition people never can visit?
These difficult-to-return areas expand over seven towns and villages, where the exposure dosage level marked 50 sievert (Sv) immediately after the blast are and will be indefinitely closed. The 24 thousand residents are kept off their homes.
The exhibition is titled "Don't Follow the Wind" - so titled from the episode of a local angular who instinctively avoided exposure to radiation by running against the wind that carried radioactive substances.
Assistant Professor Kenji Kubota of Tsukuba University, a member of the exhibition's planning board, explains:
"We thought of an exhibition of artworks you never can visit justto offer people a chance to pass their thoughts over to Fukushima, imagine what is happening up there; we named it "Don't Follow the Wind" to imply never to trust hearsay, to prevent memories from fading....".
Concurrently with "Don't Follow the Wind" in Fukushima, another "exhibition" opened this month at Shibuya's Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, titled "Non-Visitor Center", displaying objects to help stir up your imagination for Fukushima.
As you enter the hall, you will find an exhibition ticket pinned up on the wall. The ticket is "valid after the release of the blockade" and the "Exhibition Site to be announced after the release of the blockade". The ticket is already sold and can be used after the release of the blockade.
News Source: NHK
