Atomic Banquet
“I want to invite you to sit down with me at the Atomic Banquet table. To take a sip from a uranium glass goblet, to eat a bite from a uranium glass plate. I don’t want to frighten anyone – the uranium in these vessels is purely aesthetic. So that they would be coloured greenish-yellow and at the same time acquire the property of glowing under ultraviolet light.
Sitting at this table, we have the opportunity not only to encounter a source of radiation that indirectly, but nevertheless announces its presence, but to come closer, perhaps even touch the material that “burns” in nuclear power plants and enables nuclear weapons. Nuclear technologies are valued ambiguously: for some, nuclear energy is a path to a clean and sustainable future, for others it is a technology that promises new dangers and threats, not to mention the tensions that nuclear weapons still raise. So let the Atomic Banquet table become a place to sit down with others (or if someone is afraid – simply to stand nearby) to talk about the feelings we bring, perhaps fears, reflections born at the table. Perhaps at this table we will raise a glass to a bright future or precisely the opposite – to its end. Perhaps in silence and with downcast eyes we will look at the green reflections of uranium glass in violet light, or perhaps, finding no common language, the vessels will break, and their glowing dust and fragments will scatter around us.”