Walking atomic vegas: ritual,memorial, and toxic landscapes

ABSTRACT

This article proposes the use of ritualized walking to mark and remember invisible threats and the ‘slow violence’ of contaminated landscapes undergoing gradual change. To exemplify the idea, the article describes our proposal for a Plutonium Memorial design, which would be a mnemonic device for marking the location of a proposed nuclear waste storage facility buried under the iconic Las Vegas Strip. Supported with evidence that ritual is commonly used to reinforce collective conscience and memory outside the sacred realm, the core of this memorial design would be regularized and ritualized pilgrimages from one of the most important and symbolic American landscapes, Las Vegas, through the equally prominent Grand Canyon to the less well-known uranium mines in Arizona (the source of nuclear power). Though hyperbolic, the Plutonium Memorial demonstrates how an active cultural-based memorial has potential to preserve narratives around contaminated landscapes. To expand beyond this radical example we schematically speculate on other scenarios that could incorporate more representative (less extreme) haptic rituals around memorials marking slowly unfolding environmental disasters. The intention is to provide new visions for durable memorials built around culture rather than structures, which are engaged with not only the past, but also the future.