Fukushima

A Human Desert, Made By Humans

About the Fukushima-series by Hana Usui
by Konrad Paul Liessmann (philosopher)

Philosopher Günther Anders, who, unlike any other thinker of the 20th century radically made the “nuclear threat” the centre of his philosophy, once noted in this context that there are events of such magnitude that they cannot be reached by art. The annihilation of millions of Jews he considered to be one of them, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki another. Such practices of obliteration he referred to as “historically supraliminal”, since our imagination cannot encompass their terrible dimensions. He was therefore sceptical towards aesthetic attempts to address these horrors; the fundamentally playful aspect of any artistic expression, for him, moved even the most radical efforts into the territory of trivialisation. In the face of the severity of nuclear threat, following his provocative thesis, every aesthetic approach must be lacking in seriousness.