Start a Reaction Culminating Event
Saturday, August 7 from 4:30pm–7:30pm
Nuclear Energy Sculpture Plaza
5625 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637
Open to the Public

The public is invited to attend an event staged on the University of Chicago campus at the original site of Chicago Pile-1, the birthplace of humanity’s first sustained nuclear reaction.

They Did Not Hesitate is a new site-specific performance work created and performed by MacArthur Fellow Eiko Otake. Born and raised in post-war Japan but a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko is a movement-based interdisciplinary artist. Combining movements and monologues, this ritual of mourning invites viewers to imagine what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki this week 76 years ago. Her frail, unadorned body will also intersect with the site of the first sustained nuclear chain reaction. Eiko asks: How can we stop celebrating the history of massive killings and technology that made it possible? How can we learn to hesitate against momentum? How can we survive?

Performances of They Did Not Hesitate by Eiko Otake will occur three times at the Henry Moore Nuclear Energy Sculpture Plaza on August 7th, at 5:00, 6:00, and 7:00 pm.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Link to Event