U.N. websites say that 33 people died from the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe and 6,000 children got cancer. Is that the extent of the damage? Working through newly disclosed Soviet health archives, historian Kate Brown discovered that Soviet doctors reported a public health disaster in the Chernobyl-contaminated territories in the late 1980s. The archives show a death toll of not 35, but 35,000 and tens of thousands hospitalized after the disaster. What happened to this story? In this keynote address, delivered as part of the conference Atomic Heritage, Prof. Brown explores international archives to show how evidence of widespread health problems from Chernobyl exposures disappeared from the scientific consensus.

Prof. Kate Brown is Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. She is the author of Plutopia: Nuclear Families in Atomic Cities and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford 2013) and Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide for the Future (Penguin 2019). The discussion of "The Great Chernobyl Acceleration" will address the production of knowledge, non-knowledge and material culture in the societies and natures that are being transformed by nuclear technology. Originally the talk was scheduled to take place in September 2020, alongside the exhibition "Splitting the Atom," curated by Ele Carpenter and Virginija Januskeviciute at the Vilnius Contemporary Art Centre, but the event was postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. "Splitting the Atom" was successfully opened and its legacy could be explored online (https://daleliuskilimas.cc/en/ ). In 2021 the organisers would like to invite the audiences interested in the link between art and technology to follow "The Great Chernobyl Acceleration" through the Lithuanian National Art Gallery's live stream.
With the participation of Prof. Melanie Arndt, University of Freiburg, Germany, and Prof. Anna Storm, Linköping University, Sweden.

Programme: https://ticcih.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/final-programme.pdf

Live streaming on YouTube: https://youtu.be/57KNWaLityo
Preregistration: https://liu-se.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_y_IVJr75SMyqsbrvlSfjdA

Organised by the research project "Atomic Heritage Goes Critical," Linköping University (Sweden), in partnership with Kingston University London (UK) and Pompeu Fabra University (Spain).
 
Co-hosted by: National Gallery of Art (Vilnius) and This Is Tomorrow.