Out now, as of March 2023: „Hintergrundstrahlung / Background Radiation“, the artist book by photographer Sulamith Sallmann and media artist Enkidu rankX (that would be me), published by Eine Art Fabrik.

The backstory is less cozy than the paper: I grew up in the late 70s and early 80s in a French bay wedged between a nuclear power plant and a fuel reprocessing facility. Sulamith grew up at the same time on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Between Chernobyl 1986 and the Cold War, nuclear catastrophe was not an abstraction — it was the neighbour. Then 1989 came and everyone agreed the danger had been dealt with. Handy consensus. We all know how that opinion aged by 2022.

In March 2015, when Vladimir Putin vanished from public view for ten days, I recorded radio transmissions from around the world — private, commercial, military, some encrypted, some just noise. Against the backdrop of Ukraine 2014, something big was audibly about to happen. Out of that material came the sound collage „Hintergrundstrahlung / Background Radiation“, and eventually this book: Sulamith’s photographs, my text.

Order the book here: Eine Art Fabrik — Hintergrundstrahlung / Background Radiation. The radio play and further material live at background-radiation.com. Sulamith’s take on the project is here: sulamith-sallmann.de.

And the project keeps travelling — we presented it at Radio Industry, Woltersdorfer Festival für Kunst + Gegenwart 2023.

Do it for the sake of the subject, not mine. You might find something that disturbs your ears — this time on purpose.