Peter d’Agostino: A-bombs / Climate walks
October 1 - November 21, 2020

The works can be previewed online at this link: http://peterdagostino.com/Ab.html

Now in 2020, during the 75th anniversary of the birth of the Atomic Age, a startling confluence of events: the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests for racial justice, and raging wildfires, resulting from global warming, are all justifiably at the forefront of our consciousness. However, even before the world was engulfed by these tragic events, the Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock forward to 100 seconds before midnight, signifying that we are living in history’s most dangerous era, as “Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers - nuclear war and climate change ." Evidence from ice cores in Antarctica has precipitated a charting of the “Great Acceleration” of human induced climatic changes over more than two centuries, from the start of the industrial revolution, 1750, to the present. This has led to the formulation of a new epoch in the  Geological Time Scale, the Anthropocene.

The dramatic continuum of this epoch is described by the emergence of long enduring markers of radioactive isotopes from nuclear fallout. This evidence initially appeared in July 1945 with the first A-bomb test in the New Mexico desert, and weeks later with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Nuclear proliferation rapidly accelerated at the peak period of atomic and hydrogen bomb tests which occurred during the Cold War Arms Race between the United States and Soviet Union, 1955 - 63. Traces of carbon-14 emerging primarily from that fallout, resides in the Earth’s atmosphere, permeating all forms of plant and animal life, and, as a result, is still detected in all human DNA even today.

These interrelated themes connect the works in the exhibition Peter d’Agostino: A-bombs / Climate walks, on view at the Transmission Gallery, October 1- November 21, 2020. See the exhibition during current open hours, Fridays & Saturdays, 12 - 5pm (health orders permitting) or by appointment.

Of special note, TRACES (1995/2020), a work commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Atomic Age, is the culmination of Peter d'Agostino's lifelong obsession with the tragic consequences of nuclear proliferation. He was born in 1945, between the A-bomb test on July 16 in New Mexico, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 and 9. The TRACES video installation initially premiered at three art museums across the U.S. beginning in Baltimore, March 1995. During August, it was incorporated into the 50th anniversary series of events, “Becoming Death: Cinema and the Atomic Age,” curated by Steve Seid at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. TRACES is a limited edition box set composed of a video, photographs, catalogue, letters and related ephemera dating back to 1945. It also addresses the controversy surrounding the Smithsonian’s decision to modify the “Enola Gay” exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC that opened in June, 1995.

In addition to TRACES (1995/2020), recent and restored works in the Peter d’Agostino: A-bombs / Climate walks exhibition include TRACES: virtual installation (2020), World-Wide-Walks / Atomic – Hydrogen (2020), World-Wide-Walks / between earth & water / ICE (2014/2020), and VR/RV: a Recreational Vehicle in Virtual Reality (1993/2020).  The works can be previewed online at this link: http://peterdagostino.com/Ab.html

An exhibition catalogue as well as a selection of books and catalogues related to the artist’s work will also be available in the gallery, including: World-Wide-Walks / Peter d’Agostino: Crossing Natural-Cultural-Virtual Frontiers (2019), Peter d'Agostino: COLD/HOT - Walks, Wars & Climate Change (2019), Peter d'Agostino: World-Wide-Walks / between earth & sky / 1973-2012 (2012), Peter d'Agostino: Interactivity & Intervention, 1978-99 (1999), TRACES: a multimedia installation of the Atomic Age (1995), TRANSMISSION: toward a post-television culture (1995), TRANSMISSION: theory and practice for a new television aesthetics (1985), The Un/Necessary IMAGE (1982), Photography and Language (1976).

Peter d'Agostino's pioneering video, photography, and new media projects have been exhibited internationally for over five decades. His work was in the Biennials of Sao Paulo, Brazil; Gwangju, South Korea; Whitney Museum, New York; and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive; Oakland Museum of California; National Gallery of Canada; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi, Belgium; Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona; among others.

Born in New York City, 1945, d’Agostino lived in San Francisco from 1968-77; his works of the 1970s were in the following survey exhibitions: Space-Time-Sound: Conceptual Art in the San Francisco Bay Area- the 1970s (1979), California Video (2008), Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-81 (2011-12), State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970 (2011-14). He divides his time between the Bay Area and Philadelphia, where he is currently Professor of Film and Media Arts and Director of the Climate, Sustainability & the Arts working group at Temple University. A complete list of his projects is at peterdagostino.com.

More about Peter d'Agostino

Exhibition Catalogue

TRACES 

Special Edition Box Set

 TRACES (1995/2020) is the culmination of Peter d’Agostino’s lifelong obsession with the tragic consequences of nuclear proliferation. He was born in 1945, between the A-bomb test on July 16 in New Mexico, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 and 9. The TRACES video installation initially premiered at three art museums across the U.S. beginning in Baltimore, March 1995. During August, it was incorporated into the 50th anniversary series of events, “Becoming Death: Cinema and the Atomic Age,” curated by Steve Seid at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. TRACES is a limited edition box set composed of a video, photographs, catalogue, letters and related ephemera dating back to 1945, available in online preview August 1 through September 30. Beginning August 7 visit on Fridays & Saturdays 12 - 5pm (health orders permitting).

More about the TRACES limited edition box set