Xristos Minas, School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies

'No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here': exploring intergenerational loss, materiality, and spirituality, within wider geological and nucleartime

I will be reading a piece of creative writing which explores my background as a Greek-British dual national, the gaps in my knowledge of my cultural histories, and examines the tension between the two cultures and their different spiritualities. I use this text to weave these objects of mundane, daily life, into wider temporalities, particularly wider geological and nuclear temporalities, and I invoke themes of longing and belonging, permanence and waste, collecting and archiving, to create a narrative that shifts between spiritual and mundane life.

I will also present a short research piece on long-term nuclear waste warning messaging, and outline its significance within wider cultural concerns about language, ‘civilisation’, and waste. I want to draw connections between this specific mode of intergenerational communication, and other intergenerational, historical and cultural narratives.

BA Fine Art, Final Year (he/him)
I am a fine art student, Greek, queer, British, not always in that order.