Video Exhibition: Kōmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here

The VIDRINE presents four artists’ video responses to nuclear history, colonialism, and climate change in the Pacific, made in the wake of the Kōmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here voyage. In Anointed, poet and Marshall Islands Climate Envoy Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner stands on Runit Dome at Enewetak Atoll, the concrete cap the United States built over radioactive debris from its nuclear tests, and speaks to radioactive racism and the long quest for peace and justice. The video was directed by Dan Lin and produced by Pacific Resources for Education and Learning. Michael Light’s BRAVO, ECHO 1954–2023 returns to the site of the Castle Bravo nuclear test, tracing its mark on the landscape across nearly seventy years. In Mammoth, Michael Pinsky carries a mammoth tooth from England’s eroding Norfolk coast to the Castle Bravo crater at Bikini Atoll, linking the mammoth’s climate-driven extinction to today’s rising seas. David Buckland’s videos of his Bikini Texts projected into and on the waves inside the Bikini Atoll. The words projected, including ‘Our Life is Here,’ all reflect on the Marshallese culture, the traumatic nuclear explosions detonated on Bikini and the rising sea levels. — Presented in partnership by the UC Berkeley Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative, Worth Ryder Gallery, and the The Kōmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here Curatorial and Artist team. The Kōmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here expedition was organized by Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, Michael Light, and David Buckland, and supported by Stellar Blue Fund and Cape Farewell. Special thanks to independent curators of UC Berkeley Kōmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here exhibitions Amy Kisch and Svea Lin Soll. Kõmij Mour Ijin / Our Life Is Here at UC Berkeley is made possible with support from the Stellar Blue Fund, Cape Farewell, and the Kramlich Art Foundation.