“Nucléo offre au public un accès nouveau à quelques-unes des œuvres produites par Cécile Massart. Elles se signalent comme des séries au régime formel à la fois continu et discontinu. Des travaux récents s’ajoutent à ceux réalisés ces toutes dernières années. En écho à ce que Susan Sontag avait un jour appelé « vision technologique », mais réfractaires aux lignes de code arrêtées, ces travaux mettent en mouvement des interrogations touchant au potentiel du sous-sol terrestre, au plan de l’industrie nucléaire. En particulier le traitement des déchets extraits des sites de fonctionnent atomique – cela aussi bien en Occident que dans d’autres parties du monde. Concurremment, le regard de l’artiste se porte sur le souci environnemental, désormais, mais avec combien de retard, un thème politique. La question du « motif », mis à l’honneur par la tradition picturale du paysage en Europe, se trouve reconfigurée. A l’aide de surfaces d’impressions et de transferts, et de strate en strate, chaque étape du travail se marque telle une réinterprétation des précédentes.”      

Introduction de Aldo Guillaume Turin         

Rubbish. Perhaps the most visible and physical aspect of the looming environmental crisis.

‘’Throwaway’’ is a project that unearths the hidden history of waste in Europe while simultaneously highlighting its significance as a marker of social change. Starting with the industrial revolution, ‘’Throwaway’’ brings us on a journey through wartime scarcity, the surge in post-war consumerism, and finishes with today’s insurmountable waste crisis. It displays the profound changes in how we have dealt with rubbish in bygone years, and the way we think, or don’t think about waste. By looking at the past, it makes current criticisms and the resounding calls for change relevant and meaningful. 

Ils en disent long sur nos valeurs, nos choix et nos modes de vie. Ordures aborde les grands enjeux écologiques, sociaux et économiques que génèrent nos détritus. L'exposition fait la clarté sur la notion même de « déchets », pour comprendre leur nature, leur dangerosité, leur traitement et leur impact.

How can knowledge of high-level radioactive waste existence, nature and history be passed on to future generations? The NEA Expert Group on Awareness Preservation (EGAP) has been focusing on this question and is working on new concepts and alternative approaches to be taken into account in a comprehensive strategy.
In order to disseminate and discuss first results, receive feedback and broaden the discussion to include various stakeholders, the EGAP organised a workshop Remembering the past in the future: Building awareness of radioactive waste repositories together.

Cécile Massart - Consciousness of the Landscape

The first part of this presentation focusses on a series of photos taken at radioactive waste sites, with a summary of exhibitions and videos designed to reflect the link with respective reports. Whether in a gallery, museum, cultural centre, enterprise, these works present the possibility to perceive the publics’ ignorance at times, discuss environmental issues, technologies used, future changes in the landscape, transformations, migrations, and politics. These elements represent the main triggers outlined in a study which started in 1994.
Cécile Massart’s research on memory transmission for the future started in this context. Her book entitled “COVER” is a compilation of drawings created during her travels to historic sites throughout the world, a testimony to vanished civilisations, and her markers intended for low-level radioactive waste sites. Projects based on these markers were studied for France’s National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (ANDRA) CSM Manche site.
Following an artistic residence at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) and at Beatty, Nevada next to Yucca Mountain, Cécile drew 7 concepts entitled “LABORATOIRES”. These drawings are of environmental structures situated near high level radioactive waste repository sites under construction, and visible to everyone in the landscape. “BatLab” – a marker with unprecedented architecture, fits into this plan to unite researchers from various disciplines to discuss modes of transmitting memory (e.g. film, wandering, songs, markings, tools, technology) in connection with universities, art schools, rural associations, communities, in order to imagine an unavoidable regeneration.
This landscape structure opens the path towards forming a new way of oversite, monitoring by everyone for everyone, and learning to live with waste.
Art is a powerful vector, and a nuclear culture can help to understand challenges

Visible at The Porous City exhibition, near Jan Van Eyck Place.

I will present the installation NUCLEO, a work around pieces and archive photos lent by EURIDICE (European Underground Research Infrastructure for Disposal of nuclear waste in Clay Environment).

Contemporary art and architecture in the historical city of Bruges May to October 2021.
Curated by Till-Holger Borchert, Santiago De Waele, Michel Dewilde, Els Wuyts.

Official website of the Bruges Triennale and the press release of TraumA

"Les paysages sont dépositaires de mémoires. Celles des regards qui s’y sont posés. Celles des pas qui les ont foulés : déambulations, marches, traversées. Celles des gestes qui les ont façonnés, venant de laboureurs, de forestiers, d’architectes, de géomètres, de stratèges. (…)”
Début de l’introduction du catalogue de l’exposition
Signé Luba Jurgenson & Philippe Mesnard

J’y présenterai des photographies de mes reportages à travers le monde.
Extrait du catalogue

Artistes & documentaristes:

Galia Ackerman - Maryvonne Arnaud - Romulus Balazs - Patrick Bard - Edith Bories - Anaïs Boudot - Jean-Marc Cerino - Camille Claude - Pascal Desmichel - Initial (Joséphine Billey, Paule Pointereau & Lucie Poirier) - Tomasz Kizny - Sergueï Kovaliov - Sergueï Lebedev - Pascaline Marre - Cécile Massart - Philippe Mesnard - Johanna Quillet - Carlo Saletti - Marc Sagnol - Juan Pablo Sánchez Noli

Vidéos:

Maryvonne Arnaud - Philippe Mesnard - Luba Jurgenson & Gabriel Raichman

Dessins d’enfants sur Tchernobyl:

Andreï Biaganski, Guennadi Bogatch, Pavel Chtchoukine, Natalia Dziadzioulia, Alexandra Kizilava, Alexandra Koukrych, Alena Kozina, Valeri Prokopovitch, Olga Regalava, Iryna Stryjankova, Tania Tchelalo, Alexandra Vassilevitch, Nastia Zemirova

Site-specific installation

Colours of Danger is a three dimensional installation which expands the artist's conceptual.

Presentation of the book "Cover" and exhibition of the original drawings at the Hôtel van de Velde, ENSAV La Cambre, Brussels.