The impact of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs on both Japanese and British lives are placed side-by-side in a new artwork commemorating the event’s 75th anniversary.
The piece, commissioned by the Imperial War Museum, is titled I Saw The World End and responds to the moment that the nature of war changed course.
Artists Es Devlin and Machiko Weston have been sharing a studio space for more than 12 years, “often exploring fictional apocalypses in drama and opera, but this is the first time we have jointly explored the impact of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings on our respective cultures.”
During lockdown, the pair took time to research and collate pieces of text in English and Japanese separately, with the results appearing on a split screen. The half in English traces the origin of the atomic bomb in fiction with HG Wells, alongside accounts from the protagonists of the Manhattan project. The Japanese half is made up of accounts from the moments the bombs landed.
Devlin and Weston added that the split-screen expresses “the potential for division...splitting the atom, the division between fiction and fact, race divisions, the division between humans and the planet”.
I Saw The World End is part of the Imperial War Museum’s series marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Last week, the museum unveiled Ai Weiwei’s 1,000 square ft installation, History of Bombs, which depicts 50 to scale bombs from World War I to the present day in its atrium.
I Saw The World End is available to view here
.jpg?w=600)
