Leinen Los!
85. Herbstaustellung

At 1.24 am on 26 April 1986 an accident occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, causing one of the reactors to explode. 36 hours after the accident the almost 50,000 inhabitants of Pripyat, a city only 3 kilometres away, were evacuated at two hours’ notice and with a promise that they would be able to return after three days. An area of 30 square kilometres, including Pripyat, was closed off and has remained uninhabitable because of the radioactive contamination from the accident.
            Pripyat was built in 1970 to house the workers of the Chernobyl power plant. Like many new cities in the Soviet Union, its plan incorporated the French–Swiss architect Le Corbusier’s concepts of the utopian city, or, as he put it, the ‘radiant city’. Le Corbusier wanted to integrate greenery with high-rise buildings, in extensive spaces between the buildings but also underneath them and on the rooftops, creating a ‘vertical garden city’. His aim was to offer workers easy access to nature and leisure time. Pripyat today is a different kind of garden city: uninhabitable by humans, but a haven for wildlife.
            On 24 June 2010 Kristiansen ventured into the exclusion zone surrounding the destroyed Chernobyl nuclear reactor. He has used this visit as a starting point for his MFA graduation exhibition, which comprises photographic material, video and sound pieces.

For more information, please contact Lars-Andreas Tovey Kristiansen at mail[at]toveykristiansen.com