Into Eternity

Every day, the world over, large amounts of high level radioactive waste are placed in interim storages which are vulnerable to natural or manmade disasters. In Finland the world’s first permanent storage is being constructed on Olkiluoto island — a huge system of underground tunnels hewn out of solid rock. It is essential that it lasts 100.000 years, as this is how long the waste remains hazardous. When the waste has been deposited, the facility will be sealed off, never to be reopened. But can we ensure that? How is it possible to warn our descendants of the waste we left behind? How can we prevent them from thinking they have found the pyramids of our time, mystical burial grounds, hidden treasures? Which languages and signs will they understand, and if they understand, will they respect our instructions?

Entering Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn from Kadriorg park, the visitor is caught by a strange sound. One of the projects at Danish contemporary art exhibition Spatium is Jacob Kirkegaard’s sound installation Koirohi. The artist has placed 16 loudspeakers into corridor that play recordings from the till today operating nuclear powerplant Olkiluoto in Finland. Same theme is treated in artist’s another work Aion (on the 5th floor) where video and sound recordings deliver us the sonic elements in the abandoned public spaces in ghost city Chernobyl (means wormwood in Ukrainian and koirohi in Estonian).