“Can You Get Anyone to Care?” Curating an Exhibition on the Great East Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Disaster during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Although COVID-19 has commonly been narrated as an impediment to the arts, I argue that it also offered exciting new opportunities to engage audiences with exhibitions focus on public health crises. In this article, I reflect on my experience of curating Picturing the Invisible with students at Technical University Munich (TU Munich) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organized in memory of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, the exhibition was shown at the Royal Geographical Society, London (October till December 2021) during the so-called “second wave” and at TU Munich (June 2022) amid the rise of the Omicron Variant. Departing from the common tendency to narrate events as having been successfully organized despite the pandemic, this paper presents the virus as co-creating—perhaps even co-curating—the exhibition. To do so, I provide a brief overview of Picturing the Invisible, before going on to analyze the role that the virus played in calling me to organize this project (as both a researcher and as a lecturer), how it has made it logistically possible, and how it presented new opportunities to engage foreign audiences with the experience of Japan’s triple disaster.

December 2021) then at Technical University Munich (TU Munich) (June 2022).Since the time of writing, the exhibition was hung at the Heong Gallery (Figure 1), Downing College, Cambridge (February to April 2023).
This paper has grown out of a moment of social discomfort.A colleague said that my students and I had done well to organize the exhibition despite the pandemic, causing me to squirm.Beyond a (British) allergy to praise, I found myself objecting to the word "despite."By way of explanation, I hope to offer a radically different account of the relationship between the exhibition and the virus-one that avoids the (conventional) hero narrative of man triumphing over nature.I do not wish to frame the virus as an adversary, somehow (momentarily) overcome in the organization of the exhibition.Doing so would not only be immodest; it would also be inaccurate.As I hope to demonstrate, the virus inspired, impeded, and enabled this project in equal measure.COVID-19 made it difficult to organize any in-person events.Yet without COVID-19, this event would and could not have taken place.In recognizing this, I would like to present the virus as cocreating-perhaps even co-curating-the exhibition.To do so, I will first provide a brief overview of Picturing the Invisible, before going on to analyse the role that the virus has played in calling me to organize this project (as both a researcher and as a lecturer), how it has made it logistically possible, and how it presented new opportunities to engage foreign audiences with the experience of Japan's triple disaster.All exhibitions are a product of their times, but not all times are as marked as the COVID years-and this exhibition's debt to its moment was especially great.It is the extent to which the virus played an active part in the conception, organization, financing, installation (Figures 2 and 3), and reception of this exhibition that I wish to explore.

PICTURING THE INVISIBLE IN BRIEF
Picturing the Invisible belongs to a tradition of collaboration between academics and artists (see for example: Bevan 2019; Mori and Kagaya 2015;Tyszczuk, Smith, and Butler 2019).This mode of work has proven popular in Geography, Anthropology and STS (Benschop 2009;Downey and Zuiderent-Jerak 2021;Rogers et al. 2021)-owing, in part, to the disciplines' shared interest in using art exhibitions as vehicles of public engagement (e.g., Newell, Robin, and Wehner 2016), capable of fostering dialogue around controversial topics (Fraaije et al. 2022), such as nuclear technology (Rogers et al. 2021) and climate change (Tyszczuk, Smith, and Butler 2019).This surge of activity has been supported by institutional efforts to foster collaboration between academics and artists.A particularly prominent role has been played by learned societies (e.g., 4S' STS Making & Doing) and galleries, both within universities (e.g., Sainsbury Centre, Heong Gallery, VU Art Science Gallery) and outside of them: many major cultural institutions appointing dedicated curators of environmental art for the first time (e.g., Tate, Serpentine, Royal Ontario Museum).A particular emphasis has emerged on exhibitions that make visible otherwise intangible issues, such as climate change, which have invisible

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TAKAHASHI causes and diffuse effects (e.g., Perera et al. 2021).This focus reflects a common conviction that exhibitions can serve a civic function, promoting dialogue on environmental issues by translating complex topics into a digestible and engaging form.Working within this tradition, the Picturing the Invisible exhibition brings together eight talented 3 artists working with film-or other photographic mediums (e.g., daguerreotypes)-in the territory affected by the "triple disaster."Each of their works is paired with a short essay provided by a policymaker, citizen scientist, author, activist, or academic from the field of Geography, Science and Technology Studies (STS), Anthropology, or Japan Studies (see Table 1).Additional works have been added to this core corpus as the exhibition has travelled.Though the contributors are diverse in their experiences and perspectives, they share an interest in nuclear landscapes and a commitment to "making the invisible visible" (Mori and Kagaya 2015).To promote access to the exhibition at a time of ongoing travel restrictions, all 14 artworks and essays have been made available on a dedicated website (picturing-the-invisible.art) and video tours, filmed at both the RGS (Takahashi 2021a(Takahashi , 2022a) ) and TU Munich (Takahashi 2022b), have been uploaded to YouTube (see also, Takahashi 2023b).
Despite concerns that social distancing measures 4     4).Each tour lasted one hour and was attended by up to 30 people.Most drew between 10 and 20, which allowed for a conversational mode of engagement, and I frequently stayed behind for 30 to 45 minutes to speak with interested visitors.I was struck by the frequency with which they drew connections between the content of the exhibition and their own lived experiences of the pandemic.It was these encounters that prompted me to reflect seriously on COVID-19's agency in shaping the conception, delivery, and reception of the exhibition.

COVID-19 AS A CALL TO ACTION
In the Role of a (Nuclear) Researcher Though Picturing the Invisible explores life in the wake of 3.11, it was COVID-19 that inspired the exhibition.By Spring 2020, I had worked on the Fukushima Daiichi disaster for close to a decade 5 and like many ethnographers, I felt that I had struck a pact with my research subjects: they had welcomed me into their lives; I had promised to tell their stories through my scholarship.But COVID-19 compelled me to find more popular ways to transmit their experiences.As early as 2016, I had heard citizen scientists (e.g., Takagi School of Citizen Science), activists (e.g., Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes), and international organisations (e.g., ICRP) speak excitedly of both the disaster's 10-year anniversary and the Tokyo 2020 Olympics as Note: The two pieces by Takashi Arai could not be shown at the RGS or TUM due to budgetary restrictions.

CAN YOU GET ANYONE TO CARE?
opportunities to communicate the lessons of the "3.11" the world.They were keenly aware that the Tokyo Olympics were born of a desire to showcase the Tohoku region's recovery to the international community; the Japanese state dubbing the Olympics the "Recovery Games."In keeping with this mission, the 2020 Olympic torch had been built from recycled aluminium, "originally used in the construction of prefabricated housing units in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake" and, on its arrival in Japan, began an (unusually long) 121-day tour of the nation's 47 Prefectures in the Tohoku region (Figure 8).The idea was that the Olympic flame would shine a light on the recovery of the region.Yet as Qatar has since discovered, the global attention of a major sporting event can be a double-edged sword.Many of my research informants expected the 2020 Olympic torch to cast light on the myriad issues that continue to afflict the Tohoku region: the tens of thousands who remain unable to return home; the legions who choose not to; the advanced age of most who do; the social and economic difficulties they find upon their return (see Figure 5); and the discrimination faced by those who have settled into new lives, elsewhere.The decision to host the Olympic baseball and softball events in Fukushima, in particular, was expected to raise questions about the safety of the athletes in the international media-not unlike the discussions of smog that surrounded the 2008 Beijing Olympics.For many of my research informants, this media attention was an opportunity to pose broader questions about how "acceptable" limits of radiation exposure were being set for both the citizens of Fukushima and the workers hired to decontaminate it (Hecht 2012(Hecht , 2013;;Koide 2020).None of this was to be.In the face of the global pandemic, the "Recovery Games" became the COVID-19 Olympics and stories about the status of Tohoku's reconstruction were

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TAKAHASHI displaced by acrimonious debates about whether to hold the Games at all.In this context, it was hard to pitch news items on the status of Fukushima.The crisis at home made it difficult to generate any interest in a decade-old environmental disaster abroad.COVID was newand "newsworthy"-in a way that the nuclear disaster was not.The idea behind Picturing the Invisible was that art might offer an alternative forum for reflection-that while newspaper editors may (rightly or wrongly) feel that the public do not want to read about another public health crisis, the custodians of exhibition spaces might be tempted to host some of the groundbreaking work emerging from the Tohoku region.And visitors who profess to find the news "too depressing to read" might nonetheless engage with the realities of life in Fukushima today when drawn to an image they find beguiling or compelling.In short, I hoped to use the capacity of art to inspire, intrigue, and seduce to spark conversations about the context of the works' production: context that is usefully provided by the essays that accompany the artworks (for example, see Figure 6).

IN THE ROLE OF A LECTURER
My second motivation for organizing Picturing the Invisible was pedagogical.In forcing us from our seminar rooms and into the confines of the "home office," COVID-19 foreclosed any possibility of a "normal" university experience.There would be no chatter in the corridors, lunchtime study-groups, or dormitory parties, and students' academic achievement suffered (Mahdy 2020).Yet I was adamant that no student of mine should think to themselves, "if only I had started in another year … ."To this end, I wanted to offer my students something extra-above and beyond what students in other cohorts had the opportunity to do.The opportunity presented itself in the form of teaching an Immersion Project on the Responsibility in Science, Engineering, and Technology (RESET) Elite Master's course at TU Munich.This signature course invites graduate students to learn social constructivist approaches by working intensively on a case study for five months.In this case, students were invited to critically examine models of science communication and public engagement with empirical reference to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster.Rather than simply write about how others had communicated the disaster, I offered my students the opportunity to try it for themselves, putting their critical insights into practice by helping to curate the Picturing the Invisible exhibition.My students have been involved at every stage of the curatorial process: helping to shape the exhibition's narrative; selecting artists and essayists; scouting suitable venues; designing interactive installations; and planning how to install the exhibit.Seven students also contributed essays to the exhibition program which can be read on the Picturing the Invisible website (Figure 7).

COVID-19 AS AN ENABLER
In addition to creating the impetus for the exhibition, the "new normal" also freed up the resources necessary for this project.Readers will no doubt recognize how varied experiences of lockdown have been.A period which, for some, has been characterized by precarity, hazardous working conditions, and bereavement has been experienced as an opportunity to save the time, money, and energy associated with commuting by others.In my own case, the transition to working from home was broadly time neutral.The time I gained by not having to commute or travel to conferences, was quickly cancelled out by weeks spent in bed with COVID-19, new calls for pastoral care, and the demands of the online classroom.Nonetheless, I credit the virus with creating the conditions of possibility for Picturing the Invisible.For although I already knew 11 of the 14 essayists involved, I began this project as nothing more than an admirer of the eight artists exhibited.COVID-19 made it possible to connect with them and those who knew them.The closure of galleries across the world meant that these usually globe-trotting individuals were suddenly confined to their computer screens: a captive audience for my (entirely unsolicited) emails.(To my surprise, I heard back from a majority of the artists that I contacted.)And the normalization of Zoom meetings made it possible to build genuine relationships-even friendships-with artists dispersed over 6000 miles.It occurred to me more than once that the COVID-19 also freed the financial resources necessary to get this project off the ground.As in many departments, the Munich Centre for Technology in Society (now the Department for STS, TU Munich) earmarks some funds to host guest speakers ever year.With COVID-19 forcing these lectures online in 2020 and 2021, e8000 that would have ordinarily been used for flights and accommodation was suddenly unaccounted for.As bureaucratic logics dictate that these funds could not be seconded for other purposes or deferred for future use, (and I was lucky enough to work in a department with supportive leadership,) there was an unexpected opening for more unconventional events to be organized.This initial sum was supplemented with an additional e2000 of research funds attached to my Lectureship, producing a total budget of e10,000: a sum roughly equivalent to the amount TUM allocates for a small workshop.Most the artists and essayists were exceptionally generous in offering their contribution without compensation, 216 TAKAHASHI with only one pair of collaborating artists asking for a participation fee.This allowed our modest budget to be invested almost entirely in the creation of the exhibition prints and our website.(I covered my own travel, as well as miscellaneous costs, during the exhibition's tenure at the RGS.)The exhibition was thus created, almost entirely, with funds made available by COVID-19.This core funding was later supplemented with an additional e2000 from the RESET events budget, which funded the exhibition's travel to Munich, and an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Account (£10,000) and a small grant from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation (£2667), which covered the costs of exhibiting at the Heong Gallery, Cambridge, as well as expanding the range of exhibits.The application for these additional funds was considerably aided by "proof of concept" that the initial exhibition at the RGS provided.The virus thus created the conditions of possibility for the project.It provided 80% of the funds behind the RGS show and two thirds of the fund behind the show at TUM.And while it is true that by the time the exhibition closed at the Heong Gallery, the funds made available by the pandemic accounted for just a third of our total budget, the virus had provided the most vital first third, which allowed the exhibition to take a credible form, capable of attracting additional investment.To name COVID-19 alongside TUM, Sasakawa, and the AHRC as a funder of Picturing the Invisible-indeed, our "seed investor"-would be an anthropomorphism that misstates the virus' (benign) intent.Yet it would accurately evoke the agency of this non-human thing, which has "spoken" to free the funds necessary for the exhibition's creation.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR COMMUNICATING JAPAN'S "TRIPLE DISASTER"
More interesting perhaps than the role that COVID-19 played in motivating and enabling the exhibition are the new opportunities it created for engagement with its subject matter.At a crude level, visitors' experiences of COVID-19 helped to evoke the magnitude of 3.11.Scholars from Mary Douglas (1992) onwards have observed that modern societies have a poor sense of scale (Douglas 1992, 38-54).For all our (purported) numeracy, we so often think in terms of "one," "two," "few," and "many"-collapsing all disasters into a generic category of "big" events.If we do enjoy a more proximate heuristic of scale, it is likely that it is that of the territorial unit.In this optic, 3.11 was a "national" event; the pandemic is a "global" one.We may assume that global events dwarf national ones.In that the pandemic has killed 4.8 million people worldwide, we would not be wrong.But before we conclude that the comparison might somehow diminish 3.11 in the eyes of the exhibition's audience, let us take a moment to consider the national experiences of this global event.It Is both instructive and humbling to realize that at the time that the exhibition opened, in October 2021, the virus has claimed fewer lives in Japan lives than 3.11.(The former was responsible for an estimated 17,900 deaths as of October 2021; the latter accounts for 19,700 deaths with an additional 2500 declared missing.)And while the virus had claimed lives slowly, the death toll creeping upwards over the course of a year and a half, 3.11 claimed most of its victims in minutes and hours.Such comparisons are, of course, impressionistic and need to be made with some care.The calculation of mortality rates is contested and flattening a complex event to any single metric will inevitably fail to capture its full scope.Nonetheless, mortality is a metric that visitors to the exhibition frequently requested and one that seemed to impress upon them the place of 3.11 in Japan's collective consciousness.Guests accustomed to being told that COVID-19 was the most severe challenge their nation had faced since the Second World War seemed struck by the realization that this rhetoric had already been deployed in Japan, a decade ago.
Beyond providing a sense of magnitude, COVID-19 might also allow us to better empathize with the everyday experience of a nuclear disaster.It is sometimes said that the limit of human empathy is that we draw heavily on our own experiences as the prism through which to understand others'.Faced with events that fall too far outside of our frame of reference, we tend to express a lack of comprehension.People admit that they "can't even imagine" what the other has gone through or profess that they "can't connect" to the experience.Indeed, expressing our inability to comprehend a given event is a common means of acknowledging its magnitude; hence, commentators' tendency to speak of the "unimaginable" suffering caused by disasters such as 3.11.This invocation of the "unrepresentability" of disaster is both "real"-insofar as all experience eludes representation-and imagined-the idea of "unimaginability" itself being a prominent discursive tradition through which we construct our experience of disaster (Stock and Stott 2007).This convention of unintelligibility as a heuristic for (horrifying) magnitude is also a trope of nuclear discourse, encapsulated by the novelist Martin Amis' (1987) extended discussion of the (un)thinkability of nuclear technologies, but more commonly evoked through theological allusion.It is no coincidence that the code name for the first atomic detonation was "Trinity," or that Oppenheimer reached for Hindu scripture to express his awe.Famously, he claims to have recalled the line, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" (in Freed and Giovannitti 1965a).(See also Freed and Giovannitti 1965b, 197). 6Yet in an earlier account, he is reported to have reached for another line of the Bhagavad Gita (XI, 12), to which two of the works featured in Picturing the Invisible (Figure 9) owe their title: If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One-(in Jungk 1958, 201).The artist Yoi Kawakubo is a scion of this tradition of "unthinkability."His two aforementioned works take their name from the Bhagavad Gita (XI, 12).The grandeur suggested by the theological title is matched by the artist's insistence on scale; each work standing at 2 m by 1.5 m and towering over visitors.The images themselves are unabashedly abstract.Confronted with the washes of luminous color, one cannot help but recall Rothko's color fields and wonder if we are staring at a painting, rather than a photographic image.Yet the network of concentric circles and spider-web-like cracks that run across the surface disabuse us of this notion.And in the edges of the frame we find proof of the medium.Where we might expect to see the artist's signature, we instead find the words "Fuji film" and a serial number.To produce these images, Kawakubo wandered into the nuclear exclusion zone, armed with a Geiger counter and some large format film.In this place, deemed too dangerous for humans to inhabit, Kawakubo would bury his film, returning to collect it months later (see Figure 10).The resulting images are products of ionizing radiation's touch-they literally "picture the invisible," sublime and enticingly sibylline.Yet the process of their production (documented in a video played for visitors to TU Munich and the Heong Gallery) feels curiously familiar, even quotidian, in a post-pandemic era.Few visitors will ever walk the fields of Fukushima, yet all have worn facemasks, and the personal protective equipment (PPE) that Kawakubo dons is no longer alien.As Kawakubo digs furtively, eager to reduce his exposure, we can almost feel the damp heat on our faces-all too used to breathing through polypropylene.
My student and collaborator, Aswathi Ashok was surely right to suggest that our own experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic ought to allow us to better appreciate the stresses of "seeing an invisible danger all around you" (Ashok 2021).Both radiation and the virus share a ghostly

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TAKAHASHI quality that can render familiar spaces eerie.Few artists invite us to draw this psychological parallel as explicitly as Giles Price (Figure 11).Picturing the Invisible contains two pieces from his Restricted Residence series, which depicts life in Namie and Iitate: two heavily contaminated villages in Fukushima Prefecture, which were evacuated for six years.These works do not photograph ionizing radiation in the way that other artists in the exhibition, such as Masamichi Kagaya, Satoshi Mori, and Yoi Kawakubo have.Instead, Price uses thermal imaging to conjure the psychological experience of living with an unseen threat; using the same technology to capture the fields of Fukushima and the ambience of London during the pandemic (Brakus 2021).In both settings-this visual epizeuxis seems to suggest-"we have good reason to fear what we cannot see, or taste, or hear, or touch" (Pearce in Price 2020).Unable to rely on our senses, our every action can become a negotiation with an unfamiliar risk.Prosaic choices become pained.By the time that Picturing the Invisible opened in London, our visitors-like the people of Fukushima-had wondered whether to go outside or not, whether "to make our child wear a mask or not," and whether "to eat or avoid" certain foodstuffs (Muto 2011): friends and colleagues confessing that they had avoided unwrapped foods during the first wave and taken to furtively disinfecting each item before storing it in their kitchen.In this regard, they are better placed to understand the anxieties of life in Fukushima than they were prior to the pandemic.As one visitor wrote on their feedback form, they saw "one crisis bleeding into another."For the people of Namie and Iitate, among others, the nuclear disaster has bled into the pandemic; one disaster compounding another.For our visitors, it's their lived experiences of COVID-19 that bleed into their engagement with 3.11, sensitizing them to the ways in which a public health crisis can invade even the most mundane elements of life.A disaster, once distant, feels closer for its resonance with the visitors' lives.
When transporting the exhibition from the RGS to TU Munich, one of my students-Nicholas McCay-suggested that we directly invite this comparison by drawing our visitors' attention to that which was invisible in the exhibition space.This was a new twist on an old theme.Artists and curators have played with invisibility since at least the 1950s, when Yves Klein unveiled The Void 7 (1958): an artwork made by emptying the Galerie Iris Clert and painting the interior white.As Rugoff (2005) notes, Klein's intent remains a subject of debate; some seeing The Void as an assertion that absence is presence.(Klein himself "maintained that the space was actually saturated with a force field so tangible that some people were unable to enter" (Rugoff 2005, 5).)Others have interpreted-and iterated-Klein's gesture as a form of institutional critique (Rugoff 2005, 12-15).By subtracting from the gallery space, artists such as the "Art & Language" duo (Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin) and Michael Asher have aimed to make more visible that which remains, drawing attention to everything from the role of explanatory text (e.g., Art & Language's Air Conditioning Show, 1967) to the labor of backroom staff (e.g., Michael Asher's Copley Gallery, 1974).Our intervention inverted the logic of this gesture: adding to the exhibition, rather than subtracting from it; and using a visible medium to evoke the literally invisible, rather than an invisible medium to make visible the overlooked.Specifically, McCay installed a thermal camera in the exhibition space, projecting the image on the gallery wall (Figure 12).Using the same color grading as Price's Restricted Residence series, the installation (and accompanying text) reminded visitors that the pandemic remained with us in 222 TAKAHASHI the gallery.It not only framed their interpretation of the works, but determined how they were able to engage with the physical exhibition space.Masks were mandated when the exhibition was hung at the RGS.At TUM, they were no longer required but signs across the exhibition hall reminded visitors that testing, contact tracing, and social distancing remained in place.The works were more sparsely hung, to allow our (bare faced) visitors to spread themselves out, and windows kept open to ventilate the exhibition hall.Current events often shape how visitors engage with an exhibition, intellectually, yet it is rare for those same events to directly influence how the exhibition is financed or hung.To speak of COVID as "co-curating" the exhibition then, is to underscore how the virus made its agency felt at every stage of the exhibition's lifecycle: from its moment of conception, through the logistics of its gestation, to its delivery at the RGS and TUM-and it is the presence of this invisible actant that McCay's installation sought to evoke.

FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2 Picturing the Invisible at the Heong Gallery [photograph], taken by Jo Underhill.
might deter engagement with the exhibition, Picturing the Invisible generated considerable interest at both the RGS and TU Munich.The exhibition was featured in The British Journal of Photography (Warner 2021), The New Statesman (Brakus 2021), BBC Science Focus (Cutmore 2021) and drew a steady flow of visitors.(Visitor numbers were not counted at the first two venues but the exhibition drew 2146 visitors at the Heong Gallery.)Over the exhibition's two months at the RGS, I led 14 tours which

FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3 Picturing the Invisible at the Heong Gallery [photograph], taken by Jo Underhill.

FIGURE 4 A
FIGURE 4 A masked tour of picturing the invisible at the royal geographical society.Still from "Meet the artists 'Picturing the Invisible' in NE Japan" [video], filmed by Ross Harrison at the Director's Gallery, Royal Geographical Society (in Takahashi 2021c).

FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5  Rebecca Bathory, Untitled, 2016, photograph, from the Return to Fukushima series.It is a common decontamination practice to scrape the contaminated topsoil into black plastic "flexible containment bags" (furekon-bukuro), which are stacked at temporary storage site like those pictured above.By 2015, more than 9 million bags had accumulated across 100,000 sites in Fukushima (MainichiShimbun 2015).The need to find permanent disposal sites is among the many issues my research respondents hoped the Olympic Games would underscore.(For discussion, seeKirby 2021;Takahashi 2023a.) to mirror 2020s Staged: a BBC drama which imagines an inexperienced theatre director capitalizing on lockdown by convincing suddenly idle actors (the inimitable Michael Sheen and ebullient David Tennant) to rehearse for a play, which will open on an unspecified date."When things open up again."

FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6 Masamichi Kagaya (in collaboration with Satoshi Mori), Evacuation: Insoles, 2018, autoradiograph, from the Autoradiograph series.Autoradiographs are images produced through exposure to ionizing radiation, rather than visible light.They allow artists to capture the contamination of everyday objects.Here, Kagaya and Mori have arranged insoles from shoes left in two evacuated towns.(For discussion, see Steger 2021; Takahashi 2022b, 2023a.)

FIGURE 8
FIGURE 8 Lieko Shiga, Portrait of Cultivation, 2009, photograph, from the Spiral Shore (Rasen Kaigan) series.Taken shortly before the triple disaster, in the coastal village of Kitakama, this photograph was published in the tragedy's wake.(For discussion, see Takahashi 2022a, 2023a; Wynne 2021.)

FIGURE 9
FIGURE 9 Yoi Kawakubo, If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the skies at once V, 2019, unexposed photographic film.(For discussion, see Jasanoff 2021; Macfarlane 2021.)

FIGURE 10
FIGURE 10 Kawakubo buries his film in Fukushima's contaminated soil in this video, which documents the making of If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the skies at once.Still from "The Artist as Explorer" [video], by Yoi Kawakubo.

FIGURE 12
FIGURE 12 Thermal camera installation designed by Nicholas McCay in response to the work of Giles Price.[photograph] taken by Paul Klausing.

TABLE 1 (
Continued) Ford Professor of International Studies, MIT and author of '3.11: Disaster and Change in Japan'