Congratulations to Professor Peter d’Agostino for the exhibition "Peter d'Agostino: A-bombs / Climate walks," on view at Transmission Gallery in Oakland, California from October 1st to November 21st.

Link to exhibition.

"Peter d'Agostino: A-bombs / Climate walks", marking the 75th anniversary of the Atomic Age, is presented at a crucial moment in time, highlighting projects produced over the years on nuclear proliferation and climate change.
 
Commentary connecting these interrelated themes and descriptions of the videos are in the exhibition catalogue.

Now in 2020, a startling confluence of events: the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests for racial justice, and raging wildfires, resulting from global warming, are all justifiably at the forefront of our consciousness. However, even before the world was engulfed by these tragic events, the Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock forward to 100 seconds before midnight, signifying that we are living in history’s most dangerous era, as “Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers - nuclear war and climate change."

TRACES (1995/2020) A complex multimedia project moving back and forth in time from the dawn of the Atomic Age to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremonies, an annual remembrance. The events in 1945 coincided with artist’s birth, occurring between the A-bomb test in New Mexico on July 16 and bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, August 6 and 9.

World-Wide-Walks / Atomic - Hydrogen (2020) Looking for J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller, ‘fathers’ of A-bomb and H-bomb on the streets where they lived. While Oppenheimer
expressed his regret about the threat to civilization brought about by the bomb, Teller’s pursuit
of the H-bomb led some to consider that he had become a “reckless advocate of nuclear war.”

World-Wide-Walks / between earth & water / ICE (2014/2020) Walks along the edge of glaciers, at the top and bottom of the globe in Iceland, Alaska and Argentina to witness signs of global warming. Juxtaposed with the walks and a sound score of evolving glacial dynamics are cautionary texts that serve as a counterpoint to the sheer beauty of these places- reminders of the fragility of massive glaciers during our current era of accelerating climatic changes.

VR / RV: a Recreational Vehicle in Virtual Reality (1994/2020) VR/RV explores the displacement and disembodiment of a technologically determined culture which co-mingles video games and computerized war. Reconstructed scenes from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 are juxtaposed with ‘smart bombs’ dropped during the Gulf War, 1990-91.

Previews of the installation videos and the exhibition catalogue can be accessed here.

A selection of books and catalogues related to the installation will be available at the gallery.

The book Peter d'Agostino / World-Wide-Walks: Crossing Natural-Cultural-Virtual Frontiers is published by the University of Chicago Press.