Appreciating what we still stand to lose couldn't be more crucial in the world we now face. Savoring everything from the signal achievements of humanity (writ large) to the pleasures and accomplishments of our everyday lives matters deeply, both as a motivation to continue working for change in an ever-messier world and as fuel for sustaining us in a struggle of unknown duration.
Yes, EMA's book is grimly grounded in reality, even as it (literally) paints a picture of a world that could be so much better. One of my favorite panels in the book is entitled "Every Day More Bullshit," just because, well, it seems all too sadly appropriate to the moment we're in.
There's also a chapter called "Radioactive Beasts," inspired by George Orwell's dystopian novel Animal Farm. The animals Aprosio writes about are worried by the state of the world and concerned that humans aren't taking the risks posed by current conflicts seriously enough.
In April 2023, some of Aprosio's fictional beasts were projected onto buildings in New York City's Times Square with support from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Other portions of the book could be displayed across this embattled planet of ours in a similar fashion to good effect.
There's more to EMA's book than can be taken in at a sitting, or even many sittings, or certainly summarized in an essay like this. Still, get your hands on it if you can. It can serve as an inspirational reference work you can dip into at any time to re-energize yourself or contemplate what a different world might indeed look like. In that way, it reminds me of the effects of Afrofuturist art and literature, not because the forms necessarily resemble each other, but because both approaches underscore the desperate need for a bold vision of what a new world might look like -- a vision of what anyone trying to change things might dream of.
Artists for Peace
Promemoria is anything but the only current art project that takes on nuclear weapons and related dangers. One of the most interesting current networks is Artists Against the Bomb, a global organization of creators who have produced an amazing array of antinuclear posters, among other works.
Another vital project in a world where nuclear weapons are proliferating and the U.S. is planning to invest up to $2 trillion dollars in the (yes, this is indeed the term!) "modernization" of its nuclear force in the coming decades is Bombshelltoe. It's a policy and arts collective that defines itself as "a creative organization pushing for an active exploration of arts, culture, and history to promote nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, and disarmament for the next generation." One of its prominent efforts is the Atomic Terrain Project, which highlights how nuclear weapons have "seeped into our waters and tapped into our soil" and "continue to harm all life, human and non-human alike."
I was fortunate enough to see an exhibition that the Project mounted at the 2024 New York Art Book Fair entitled "How to Make a Bomb" -- a book with the same title was also released then -- organized and presented by Gabriella Hirst, Warren Harper, Tammy Nguyen, and Lovely Umayam (the founder of Bombshelltoe). The exhibit was built around a flower, the Rosa Floribunda, or -- yes! -- "Atom Bomb," which Hirst describes as "a garden rose that was cultivated and named in 1953 during the Cold War arms race to commemorate Britain's newfound status as a nuclear power." Hirst has taken the lead in cultivating (and you might say pacifying) that rose, while getting it planted in gardens throughout the United Kingdom and beyond as an antinuclear gesture of beauty.
At the book fair, attendees could learn how to plant and maintain just such a rose while engaging in conversations about the history and devastating impact of nuclear weapons or checking out basic documents and books about the nuclear age. Such an indirect (even flowery!) route into truly grim subject matter drew interest from people who might not normally pick up a book on, or read an article about, the dangers of nuclear weapons but were fascinated by the physical process of grafting a rose and then willing to stay for open-ended conversations about the growing nuclear dangers in our world.
When asked why the project chose to use a rose as an entry point into discussions of such ominous and grim subject matter, Lovely Umayam noted that "nuclear issues alone can feel abstract and alarmist" and eerily unapproachable. As Gabriella Hirst put it, the project "is about taking the sublime into your own hands and working through that in small ways" to reduce fear among non-experts."
At the same book fair where I encountered the Rose Project, I had the pleasure of meeting Ben Rejali, an organizer of the art and political website Khabar Keslan. Recent essays there include an interview with Palestinian filmmaker Khaled Jarrar, but I was first drawn to the project's printed works, including reproductions of stamps from Iran and South Asia going back to the 1950s. There were, of course, numerous stamps portraying the once-dreaded Shah of Iran. There was also one of the CIA's logo with blood running down it, a reference to the agency's role in the 1953 coup that installed the Shah as Iran's autocratic ruler. Perhaps the most emotionally powerful product of Khabar Keslan, however, may have been a collection of poems entitled "Salute to Olives" by the late Omar al-Bargouthi, many of which were written while he was being held in Israeli prisons.
On a planet where nuclear dangers are only growing, both Promemoria and the Atomic Terrain project underscore the importance of finding new ways to communicate about this increasingly fragile and endangered planet of ours that inspire creativity and action rather than fear, paralysis, and denial. At a time when challenges to fundamental rights are hurtling toward us at warp speed, taking the time to experience artworks of any kind can seem like a distinct luxury, but don't believe that for a second. Such art is a key to reclaiming our humanity and getting in touch with the creative, collaborative impulses that could help save our planet. A pause, artistic in nature, to reflect and recharge our psychic batteries can go a long way toward helping us to cope with this all too strange present moment and build for the future. Promemoria provides us with that precious opportunity.
A Brief History of Culture and Resistance
Music, theater, painting, and other forms of artistic expression have, in fact, been part of every major movement for change in recent memory. The Federal Theatre Project of the 1930s, funded as part of the Works Progress Administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the era of the Great Depression, hired unemployed performers and writers who produced more than 800 plays and dance events. In the process, they highlighted work by under-represented groups, including African Americans via the Negro Theatre Project and the African-American Dance Unit. It also funded foreign language plays in Spanish, Yiddish, and German until Congressman Martin Dies, Jr., head of the House Un-American Activities Committee, led a successful charge to defund the program because of its advocacy of racial equality and other progressive themes.
Theater, however, continued to play a central role in progressive movements of the 1960s and 1970s, from Teatro Campesino, born during the United Farm Workers Union's organizing drives in California; to the Bread and Puppet Theate r, a staple of anti-war efforts; and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, whose plays captured a whole range of progressive themes, often in hilarious fashion. And don't forget the freedom songs that were at the core of the civil rights movement, sung by demonstrators at mass rallies and activists detained in local jails in the South.
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