The 2015 Fukushima Pinup Calendar

Satircal pinup calendar in HTML spreadheet format reflecting on environmental devastation related to Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The 2015 Fukushima Pinup Calendar is part of a larger piece, The Good Fortune Land, that uses Excel spreadsheets to create a narrative of the Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown and its aftermath. It continues the work of Tin Towns and Other Excel Fictions (2012). 

Artist's statement: 

The 2015 Fukushima Pinup Calendar adds another set of data points to The Good Fortune Land. As we look back on the years between 2011 and 2015, this Calendar is provided as a vivid reminder of the history of the five-year attempt to pretty up the picture. It was also a useful calendar online or printed, for home or office. It consists, of course, of the twelve months of the year – each month commemorating one of the extant issues surrounding the “control” of the plant and its surrounding water and land. In the spaces for each day, data from 2011, 2012, and 2013, and 2014 is recalled – along with the important holidays!

The 2015 Fukushima Pinup Calendar is not a comprehensive account of the Fukushima Triple Melt-Through. Rather, since the disaster is relatively complicated, the figures inconsistent, and news reports mainly fragmentary and conflicting, I approached the subject with some specific (in a sense, artistic – since all art and literature involves limitation) constraints. Having closely followed reports from the few sources that had been covering Fukushima over almost four years – sources including TEPCO itself, the Daily Yomuri, Asahi News, Fukushima Diary, ENEnews, NHK World, and SimplyInfo, among others – I found I had collected hundreds of articles – and had access to many more through news archives. What sense to be made of all of this data (especially since this affair will be ongoing for many years)?

I decided to choose one theme for each month of the year (the explosions, the land contamination, the health effects) – and, in the calendar for that month, to include only articles on that particular subject. June, for example, is the month for Water – and the problems relating to the radioactive water leaks from Fukushima. Surprisingly, choosing only the articles published in June 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, I had more than enough headlines to fill the boxes for individual days. The Calendar, then, is an impressionistic look at a continuing narrative – the end of which is unknown. . . .