Factory Fifteen (see previous post) just released their new film that they shot during Liam Young and Kate Davies’ Unknown Fields 2011 in Chernobyl (Ukraine) and Baikonur (Kazakhstan). Gamma is a sort of short pseudo documentary depicting a future in which numerous zones of the earth needs to be deradiated after a decade of nuclear war. As always in a capitalist world, this kind of public health operations are achived by private actors, here a company called Gamma which developed a type of roots that would absorb radioactivity. The film introduces the testimony of a survivor who describes how, very quickly, this root became autonomous and out of control, invading little by little his city.
The witness’ testimony talks about war machines to describe the vessels sent by Gamma, thus assimilating their action on the city as a sort of military invasion. In 1985, Ronald Reagan was claiming that the nine most terrifying words of the English language were ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help‘, we might want to paraphrase his claim against him saying that the most terrifying words are ‘I’m from a company and I’m here to help‘. The Fukushima experience clearly showed how private interests mixed with political corruption were leading to this kind of catastrophes.
GAMMA from Factory Fifteen on Vimeo.
You can watch the making-of video by following this link.
