■ Residue

■

Installation & Soundscape

Materials：
aluminium, salt, plaster, gesso

Dimensions:
Approx. 204 x 204 x 600 mm

How do nuclear events leave traces that persist not only in bodies and environments, but also in collective memory and behavior?

Residue is a research-based installation and soundscape that takes as its starting point two waves of salt hoarding in China, triggered by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 and the release of treated wastewater in 2023.

Although ordinary table salt cannot protect people from radiation, and seawater contamination did not threaten salt supplies, the panic repeatedly resurfaced, triggering collective stockpiling behavior.

The installation explores two forms of residue.

The central skeletal structure resembles both bones and marine formations, referring to chemical residue: radioactive elements such as Strontium-90 can enter the body and become embedded in bones.

Attached to the structure are cast aluminum objects derived from sites, infrastructures, events, and radioactive testing procedures associated with Fukushima. Salt crystals gradually grow across these forms, accumulating and partially obscuring the original information beneath them. This process represents behavioral residue: fears, habits, emergency responses, and collective reactions that continue to circulate long after the initial event.

By drawing parallels between radioactive incorporation and social repetition, Residue explores how collective behavior can accumulate like matter, gradually becoming part of the structures through which we perceive, remember, and respond to the world