A new work on show at the Arts Catalyst Centre in London will transport visitors to the Fukushima region in northeast Japan, which was struck by a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami early 2011 triggering a disaster at the local nuclear power plant. In 2015, the curatorial collective Don’t Follow the Wind installed a series of works in the out-of-bounds area by leading international artists such as Ai Weiwei and Trevor Paglen. But the show, known as 11 March 2015, remains inaccessible (it will open to the public when the exclusion zone is lifted). A Walk in Fukushima, on show in London (19 May-15 July), is an immersive 360-degree video piece which takes us into the no-go zone, showing the exhibition venues and even the power plant. The headsets, incidentally, are made by three generations of the Fukushima-based family of the artist Bontaro Dokuyama, who reside just outside of the radioactive zone in an area deemed “safe to live” by the government.
