One Million Hot Cells

One Million Hot Cells presents images and texts that circle around nuclear technologies and their afterlife. According to German law, the proposed timeline for the safe storage of atomic waste is 1,000,000 years. The hot cell is a laboratory designed for research on highly radioactive substances. While characterized by high-security and isolation technology, the hot cell is nevertheless intimately linked to utopias, hopes and fears, and unresolved technical and philosophical problems in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A selection of archival images is put in context by a group of international authors from a diverse range of professions and fields of study. The texts and images in One Million Hot Cells engage, both critically and sensitively, with materials that are invisible, odorless, and highly reactive as industrially released unstable isotopes. Susanne Kriemann is a Berlin-based artist and professor for code and image at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG). Judith Milz is an artist and researcher based in Berlin and Karlsruhe. Isabel Seiffert is a designer and co-founder of Zurich-based design studio Offshore. She is professor for visual literacy at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG). Nina Zschocke is a professor for art history and media philosophy at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG).