Byproduct Typography (2024)
Interactive installation commissioned by Jugendstilsenteret and KUBE.
Concrete dyed with iron oxide, epoxy resin.

Curated by Solfrid Otterholm
Production assistance: Miłosława Pesta, Piotr Chrzanowski, Zbigniew Kak.
Participators of the research workshop: Erik Gjævenes Krohn, Ingrid Høydal, Sebastian A. A. Jakobsen, M. Erstad, Margit Synnøve Holm, and others.
Produced with support from The Kjell Holm Foundation.

(…) Collectively, the small, spiky sculptures constitute an invented form of writing that conveys a warning about invisible dangers to future generations. The background is the current revival of interest in nuclear power as a means for generating electrical energy. Uranium is used as fuel in nuclear reactors, but at the end of its useful lifespan, it poses a radiation hazard that most acute during the centuries that ensue. After ten thousand years, the uranium will have decayed to a point where the radiation level is the same as it was when it was extracted from nature. Kak's artwork investigates possible ways to mark areas where radioactive waste has been buried. It amounts to a thought experiment - because no one alive today knows what society will look like in ten thousand years. Probably the country, the language, and technology will all have changed beyond recognition. The artwork also highlights a moral dilemma that reaches from the present far into the future. Our selfish consumption in the present will affect future generations. Is warning against the dangers posed by the storage of radioactive waste really an act of solidaritv? This is an interactive work, where the public are invited to move the sculptures around to compose messages for future generations. Participation in the work encourages us to think about how we consume energy today and the responsibility we bear for those who will come after us. (Text by Solfrid Otterholm)