“The Accident” by Josh Harle
Image from the interactive work The Accident (Josh Harle)
Title:
- The Accident
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Artist Statement:
The Accident is a performance lecture woven into an interactive simulation of the Mars Perseverance Rover and a Fukushima Daiichi reactor cleanup robot; a journey across human endeavours through the lens of the “Integral Accident”. The integral accident is a term from technology philosopher Paul Vilio, used to suggest that the negative, “accidental” aspects of a technology are not external or separate – the moment of a technology’s invention is also when its negative consequences are brought into reality:
“When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash…Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.”
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident and Perseverence’s successful deployment represent together the apex of human scientific accomplishment and a tragic misfortune; sharing material realities via Perseverence’s radioisotope power system, and embodying the foundational perspective of scientific knowledge achieved through ‘isolated observation’.
The work explores our tendency to embrace positives and externalise negatives of technology, the physical offshoring of these externalities to the global south, and connects to the historical context of British nuclear testing at Emu Plains. It is informed by the artist’s personal family history, previous research on ‘technology as cultural practice’, and exploration of First Nations-informed technology governance models, speaking to timely concerns about the rapid adoption of Machine Learning.
