[vimeo 384406105 w=640 h=360]

Digital animation with sound
11′ 13″
Music: Karmina Šilec (SI)
performed by: Carmina Slovenica
conductor: Karmina Šilec
Edward Elgar: The Snow
Urška Pompe: In vitam

Background:
From 1946 to 1958, the United States government and military conducted 67 tests in the Marshall Islands. Black Snow is a tale based on the archival footage about these tests, their on-going threats imposed on the lives of the people and the environment of the islands. The native people living further from the Bikini Atoll (the site of the first atomic tests-Operation Crossroads) were not aware of the effect of the radiation at the time of the bombing. They were not informed properly. Some of the people mistook the nuclear fallouts as snow and ate them. The US government advised the people of the islands not to consume the local goods contaminated with radiation, such as coconuts, which were part of the staple diet. Instead, they provided canned and other processed type of food, which increased the number of people with diabetes, obesity and other health issues on the islands.

The concrete dome, called the tomb by the locals is covering the nuclear waste resulted from the tests. Because of the aging concrete, it is already leaking, though the dome was supposed to be safe for 20,000 years. The rising sea level and the cracks in the concrete dome is a threat not only to the islanders, yet to the entire Pacific Ocean and the world.

Each scroll 9m * 32cm, Charcoal on paper, 2017