ATOMIC TERRAIN
From the historic claiming of land as national territory, to the systematic contamination of landscapes,  human impact on the natural world in the name of global security carries a tension between cultivation and control, peace and conflict. Atomic Terrain is an in-depth exploration of this tension as it pertains to the development of the atom bomb, and how the nuclear age transformed humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Atomic Terrain exists as a dialogue between two creative  projects about plant life and the heavy  nuclear stories they carry: “B(L)OOM”  and “How to Make a Bomb.”  By pairing art and research, Atomic Terrain offers nature – the humble existence of plants around us – as an alternative access point to our nuclear past, and encourages us to reckon with the ways this history reverberates in today’s geopolitical climate and cultural landscape.

How to Make a Bomb: How to Make a Bomb is a durational gardening project, examining the structural connections between horticulture, state power, and nuclear colonialism. The project centres on a rare species of garden rose, the Rosa floribunda ‘Atom Bomb’, which was developed by German rose breeder Reimer Kordes in 1953 during the height of post-war nuclear fervour. Through processes of grafting and taking cuttings, How to Make a Bomb sees Hirst propagate new specimens of this rose from one of the few remaining plants of the original species, and teaches others how to do the same through How to Make a Bomb public workshops and printed manuals. Since August 2019, the How to Make a Bomb project has been hosted by The Old Waterworks (TOW), in collaboration with curator Warren Harper. TOW is poignantly in close proximity to Foulness Island, a key nuclear weaponry development site, where test weapons bound for Maralinga and the Monte Bello Islands were developed in the 1950s. 

This listing is for a new edition of the How to Make A Bomb instructive pamphlet, produced specially for Atomic Terrain by Passenger Pigeon Press.