10,000 Year Warning System:

A Workshop with multi-media artist Robert Rhee

Saturday, February 28th, 1-2pm at The Project Room

Special Guests include: Environmental Lawyers Wyatt Golding + Sara Leverette, Linguist Tanya Matthews, and Multi-Media Artist Vaughn Bell.

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Join Artist Robert Rhee and a group of interdisciplinary thinkers for the first free public workshop in our event series, The Legacy Assignments.

Robert poses this question to participants: How do you create a warning system to prevent an accidental unearthing of 200 million pounds of radioactive nuclear waste? A simple sign, some chain link and a military post might work today. But what about 10,000 years from now?

In 2002 the U.S. Department of Energy brought together engineers, archaeologists, anthropologists and linguists and asked them this question. What type of warning system can be put in place so people, 370 generations from now, won't open the glowing door? What they came up with is hardly inspiring. Can we do better?

Together with a group of special guests, workshop participants will take a stab at designing this system while asking, "How Are We Remembered?"

Images above from the 2002 U.S. Department of Energy Nuclear Waste Storage Plan Proposal. It includes: a large earthen mound with a salt core and two identical Dr. Strangelove-esque control rooms with a warning message written in the six official languages of the U.N. and Navajo. Construction of this Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is currently stalled and (in our opinion) in desperate need of a redesign.

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Robert Rhee is based in New York and Seattle. He is an artist and writer and a professor at Cornish College of the Arts. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including White Columns in NY, the Ilmin Museum of Art in Seoul, and the Ferdinand Van Dieten Gallery in Amsterdam. He is currently represented by Opsis Art in Seoul and has an upcoming essay in the inaugural issue of Heck Magazine.