Arts of Atomic Accountability
2026 - 2027
Film Festival + Scholar-Artist-Activist Talks + Community Discussion
As the geopolitical, health, and environmental consequences of nuclear technology haunt our past, present, and future, how do we transmit knowledge about this heavy legacy, from one site to another, from one generation to the next? When the U.S. Department of Energy describes dealing with radioactive waste from nuclear weapons development as “legacy management,” the phrase denotes cleanup, in terms of toxic landscapes and historical memory. This film festival + speaker series dwells instead in community histories of bombing, mining, processing, testing, fallout, accidents, and uncontained waste—to ask what stories we need to tend and act upon for a livable future. The impact of radiation ecologies is notoriously difficult to see, making film and public art critical forms of making nuclear histories visible. Join scholars, artists, and activists as they examine colonial and infrastructural violence and share strategies for building reparative relations across communities, in convenings that connect the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington state to locations across the U.S. and the world.
______________________________________________________________________________
SIMPSON CENTER SPONSORED EVENTS
Co-Sponsors: Henry Art Gallery, Department of Cinema & Media Studies, College of Arts & Sciences Arts Division, Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, 4Culture
Film Festival Day 1 — Friday, January 22, 2027
1:30-4:00 pm
Communications Building 120
1:30–3:00 pm FILM SCREENING
- VITRIFIED (7:29 min.) Artist: Etsuko Ichikawa
This short film follows a character’s encounter with a uranium orb in the forest. Responding to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Ichikawa questions the impact of nuclear waste, and the legacy it leaves for future generations. She began creating uranium glass orbs after researching vitrification at the Hanford Nuclear Site, where it is used to contain radioactive waste before burial.
- Silent Fallout (1 hr. 13 min.), Director: Hideaki Ito
This documentary tells the story of nuclear testing fallout in Utah and the efforts of Dr. Louise Reiss in St. Louis to collect baby teeth from local children halfway across the country to prove they were also “downwinders.”
3:00–4:00 pm DISCUSSON: nuclear testing, radiation, public and environmental health
- Moderator: Jenna Grant, Associate Professor of Anthropology, UW Seattle
- Etsuko Ichikawa, Artist: prerecorded reflection
- Joseph Mangano, Director, Radiation and Public Health Project and author of Bombs and Baby Teeth: prerecorded reflection
- Dawn Chapman & Karen Nickel, Founders, Just Moms STL (invited, awaiting confirmation)
- Holly Barker, Teaching Professor of Anthropology and Burke Museum Curator of Oceanic & Asian Culture, UW Seattle
- Q&A
______________________________________________________________________________
Film Festival Day 2 — Friday, February 26, 2027
10:00 am - 5:30 pm
Henry Art Gallery Auditorium
10:00–11:45 am FILM SCREENING
- Anointed (6 min.), Director: Dan Lin, Written by: Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
The Republic of the Marshall Islands was once the testing site for some of the largest nuclear weapons ever produced by the United States. Today, the impacts of those tests are still felt by the people who call these islands home. Acclaimed Marshallese poet and activist, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, explores the nuclear testing legacy of her country through the legends and stories of one island that houses a dark secret.
- Richland (1 hr. 33 min.), Director: Irene Lusztig
This poetic, experimental film offers a prismatic, placemaking portrait of a community staking its identity and future on its nuclear origin story, presenting a timely examination of the habits of thought that normalize the extraordinary violence of the past.
11:45 am–12:00 pm BREAK
12:00–1:00 pm DISCUSSION: film, poetry, and the nuclear Anthropocene
- Moderator: Diana Ruíz, Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, UW Seattle
- Irene Lusztig, Film Director and Professor of Film and Media, UCSC
- Kathleen Flenniken, Former WA State Poet Laureate, author of Plume
- Shannon Cram, Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Bothell
- Liz Mattson, Senior Program Strategist, Hanford Challenge
- Leimamo Wase, Sociocultural Anthropology Doctoral Student, UW Seattle
- Q&A
1:00–2:00 pm LUNCH BREAK
2:00–2:15 pm OPENING + ALTAR CONSTRUCTION
- Gather in the Henry Sculpture Court
2:15–2:45 pm FILM SCREENING
- Ways of Knowing: A Navajo Nuclear History (25 minutes), Producers: Sunny Dooley, Lovely Umayan, and Adriel Luis
This immersive documentary tells a history of Navajo resilience to protect health, tradition, and land after enduring extensive uranium mining by the United States government, beginning in the late 1940s and lasting until the 1970s.
2:45–4:00 pm SILENT REFLECTION + DISCUSSION: nuclear history, indigenous knowledge, healing, art, and technology
- Moderator: Sasha Welland, Professor of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, UW Seattle
- Sunny Dooley, Film Producer and Diné Storyteller
- Lovely Umayam, Film Producer and Founder of Bombshelltoe Policy x Arts Collective
- Michael Buck, Sociocultural Anthropology Doctoral Student, UW Seattle
- Miya Burke, Program Manager, Hanford Challenge
- Q&A
4:00–5:30 pm ALTAR DISMANTLING + RECEPTION
- Henry Art Gallery Lower Level
______________________________________________________________________________
LINKED EVENTS
Cloud Drawing with Incendiary Traces Visiting Artist Hillary Mushkin
Sponsored by the College of Arts & Sciences Arts Division and Burke Museum
Wednesday, November 4, 2026
3:00 – 4:30 pm
Meeting point: Burke Museum Artist Studio (museum admission free with Husky Card)
Thursday, November 5, 2026
4:00 pm – sunset
Meeting point: Sakuma Viewpoint
In these gatherings for plein air drawing, participants look to the sky and give themselves over to the fluid flows of clouds. Mushkin will provide simple but specific drawing instructions at locations chosen for their connection to nuclear histories at UW. These “draw-ins” serve as a hands-on way to think together about what’s in a cloud and the atmospheric commons. Open to all. Materials provided; bring a hard drawing surface, such as a book or folder, with you. Please register for each session you will attend so we can plan accordingly.
Artist Bio:
Hillary Mushkin is an artist and Research Professor of Art and Design at the California Institute of Technology and organizer of Incendiary Traces, a conceptually driven, collectively generated art and research project that explores the political facets of representing landscape. Grounded in drawing, her art and research examine the power and limits of human and technological observation.
Concept:
At the advent of the atomic age, the mushroom cloud became the dominant visual representation of the nuclear bomb, even as this spectacular imagery distanced us from its radioactive traces in our everyday ecologies, including the influence of weather on the dispersion of radioactive fallout during decades of atmospheric testing. Amid the era of big data, the cloud has become the icon of networked systems of information transmission and surveillance, even as this symbolic abstraction obfuscates material consequences, including the energy needs of massive data centers and calls for a “nuclear renaissance” to fuel the AI race.
______________________________________________________________________________
COLLECTIVE ARTMAKING WORKSHOPS — Saturday, February 27, 2027
Sponsored by the College of Arts & Sciences Arts Division
Location: TBD
These research-creation sessions, open to all, offer a space to reflect on the activities, film screenings, and discussions of the Arts of Atomic Accountability program, guiding participants to draw upon their own experiences and histories to create pieces that can be assembled together into an entangled archive of nuclear histories and ecologies, a collective performance of healing and solidarity. More details to come!
9:30–10:30 am LINOCUT/CYANOTYPE WORKSHOP
10:30–11:30 am POETRY WORKSHOP with Kathleen Flenniken & Sasha Welland
11:30 pm–12:30 pm COLLECTIVE ARTWORK ASSEMBLY + REFLECTION
- What do we learn by creating and thinking alongside one another?
- How can we collaboratively weave the efforts and energies of non-profit organizations like Hanford Challenge and Bombshelltoe with those of artists, researchers, teachers, and students?
- How can these forms of research creation move beyond university and gallery spaces?
- What nuclear justice projects can we imagine activating over time and connecting sites?
FULL DOME SCREENING OF WAYS OF KNOWING — Saturday, February 27, 2027
Sponsored by the Department of Astronomy
UW Planetarium, Physics and Astronomy Auditorium, Room A22 (max. capacity 40)
3:00 pm FIRST SCREENING, followed by Q&A with Sunny Dooley & Lovely Umayan
4:00 pm SECOND SCREENING, followed by Q&A with Sunny Dooley & Lovely Umayan
- Ways of Knowing: A Navajo Nuclear History (25 minutes), Producers: Sunny Dooley, Lovely Umayan, and Adriel Luis
This immersive documentary tells a history of Navajo resilience to protect health, tradition, and land after enduring extensive uranium mining by the United States government, beginning in the late 1940s and lasting until the 1970s.
Image: Helki Frantzen Film Still