JESSIE BOYLAN

An excerpt from ‘Bladerunner was set in November 2019’ – A collaboration between Alex Moulis, Andrea Steves, Crunch Kefford, Gem Romuld, Jessie Boylan, Linda Dement (code), Tessa Rex, Yul Scarf.

Nuclear events destroy time; life fundamentally changes in an instant. Wind carries atomic survivor stories across place and time as it continues to spread radioactivity across the surface of former nuclear test sites and beyond. Nuclear events unfold forever: the concept of “before” and “after” a nuclear explosion is intangible, as there is no access to the before, and the after will never arrive.

Communities living downwind of nuclear test sites, where airborne radioactive contamination is the greatest, have come to be known as “Downwinders.”- they are the people most affected by the irreversible long half-life (24,000 years) of plutonium and other radionuclides.

This sound work centres on the ungraspable and nebulous experience, effects and affective nature of wind and explores the ways in which the wind holds symbolic resonance in the stories and experiences of downwinder communities, as well as the non-human landscapes where nuclear bombs were detonated.

By utilising code created from wind data (recorded by BoM between 1955-1967 at Maralinga in South Australia) as well as testimony from atomic survivor communities in South Australia and New Mexico, USA, voices and atmospheric sounds change in intensity, volume and pitch- depending on the speed and direction of the wind- forming layers of connected and dispersed stories, linking lives affected by nuclear events together in a never-ending, constantly shifting soundscape.

This work contains voices of: Russell and Rita Bryant (Pitjantjatjara Anangu) from Yalata, South Australia, Avon Hudson, Balaklava, South Australia, Yami Lester (dec) (Yankunytjatjara), from Walatinna Station, South Australia.

Listen here.