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The Otolith Group revisits the myth of Prometheus

Killing the monster (2)

The Otolith Group is an art collective founded in London in 2002 by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun. Through an eclectic repertoire of art materials and media, they reflect on the nature of perception and analyse the role of documents and images in the construction of accounts of the post-colonial world. Is the case of the film The Radiant (2012), that explores the impact of 11 March 2011, when the Tohoku earthquake generated a tsunami on the west coast of Japan, killing thousands of people and causing a partial collapse of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. With a soundtrack reminiscent of New Wave science fiction films and radio programmes of the 1960s and ’70s, The Radiant creates the climate of an invisible yet inordinately damaging threat. As the filmmakers themselves tell us: ‘The Radiant has to do with unspoken forms of power and identification with energy that atomic power gives. The entire project of nuclear power is a Promethean endeavour in which science and technology gain control over fundamental processes of chain reactions for supposedly the good of humanity.’ 

FONS ÀUDIO #7 – The Otolith Group

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