Re-enacting memory: an exploration of ritual in art and science in the context of a proposal for the burial of radioactive waste in Sardinia

Abstract. This paper discusses the role of ritual in art and science concerning the transmission of memory in nuclear heritage practices. The concept of ritual is analyzed following its use in religious studies, science, and artistic research: as a means of transmitting memory about nuclear waste, as well as in relation to the concept of “nuclear mundane”, here intended following Pannekoek’s definition as “contemporary techno-political mechanisms through which the unthinkable timescales of nuclear energy become banalized and figured as regular industrial risk” (Pannekoek, 2020). The paper focuses specifically on the territory of Sardinia, Italy, to address a proposal to build a nuclear waste repository, through artistic research and the artwork “Canticle of the nuclear sun”. The artwork explores the ancient practice of “Canto a tenore”, a form of polyphonic singing for four voices, via a ritual created to transmit knowledge about nuclear waste. In the artwork, the re-enacted ritual is conceived as a repetition of forgotten instructions, which overlaps with the remnants of an ancient prayer, thus failing to transmit a clear message. Through an analysis of this research, the paper intends to make the point that “scientific rituals” function in the same way as religious rituals in that they can confer sense to the ungraspable and the overwhelming of nuclear heritage practices, by filling the gaps of human knowledge. The nuclear mundane, encompassing what is overlooked in nuclear politics, becomes, through ritual, an expression of those institutional practices that claim to master the unknow.