The project JANUS (formerly Embodied Soils) brought together artistic practice and scholarly research to explore the complex narratives of the nuclear Anthropocene through sensorially immersive forms. At its core was a site-specific performance at Belvedere 21 - a building of historical significance originally conceived as the Austrian Pavilion for the 1958 World Expo in Brussels. The Expo promoted nuclear energy as a technology with “peaceful uses,” while Belgium simultaneously profited from one of the world’s richest uranium deposits - a resource whose extraction significantly contributed to the development of the atomic bomb. Within this discursively and architecturally charged space, an immersive setting was created in which historical, geological, and political traces of nuclear technologies intersected with voices from art, science, and activism.
Through close collaboration with international scholars, activists, and institutions, as well as the development of innovative formats of knowledge transfer - most notably the Research Encounters - the project initiated a profound interdisciplinary engagement with the topic. It contributed to the expansion of existing networks, including the Planetary Commons Network, the international FemNukes Research Network, the network around Extractive Zones, and ÖNA (Austrian Network Nuclear-Free). It opened pathways for potential artist-in-residencies (Tokyo, Austria), a planned publication, follow-up performances (RAY, 2027), and long-term archiving at Belvedere 21, as well as a re-staging of JANUS.