Installation Portrays Modernity as Apocalyptic

Drawing inspiration from the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, a large, outdoor audio-visual art installation sponsored by the Harvard University Committee on the Arts portrays modernity through a chaotic, apocalyptic lens.

The installation, titled “ah humanity!”, will be projected on the Science Center’s facade during the evenings throughout this week.

Featuring a single channel of video and four channels of audio emanating from large speakers, the installation reflects the “fragility and folly of humanity” in 20th and 21st centuries, according to publicity materials.

On Wednesday night, a roundtable discussion of “ah humanity!” featured the installation’s creators and panelists, who commented on the significance of the work and its exhibition at Harvard.

“By incorporating the soundscapes of an array of Japanese disaster films, ‘ah humanity!’ cements the connections between past, present and future,” panelist Karen L. Thornber, professor of Comparative Literature and of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, said. “The installation confounds any boundaries or distinctions among the three.”

The installation, which incorporates visuals from the aftermath of the nuclear disaster, includes a soundtrack featuring tracks from Japanese disaster films as well as synthetic sound.

“Several of the films are dealing with anxiety about atomic energy or about other kinds of forces which… humans have been developing but maybe have gone a little too far,” Ernst Karel, a lecturer on anthropology, said.

Another artist, Véréna Paravel, an anthropologist and filmmaker in the Sensory Ethnography Lab, said the Science Center as a backdrop for the projection provided modern context to the piece.

Panelist Reiko Yamada, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies echoed the importance of the Science Center as the setting for the installation.

However, some students did not view the installation as a positive addition to the Science Center Plaza, positing that the audio component created a disturbance for students.

“I think it’s kind of absurd that they’re blasting loud noises outside of our doors for no reason, because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of people watching it,” Canaday resident Liam H. Cleary ’19 said. “Except for me taking a video to show someone how ridiculous it is.”

The Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies sponsored the project with the support of Digital Arts and Humanities at Harvard and the Harvard University Asia Center.