More about the project:
From 1949 through 1989, Kazakhstan was subjected to more than 500 inhumane testings of nuclear and thermonuclear bombs that ruined lives of one and a half million of its people and caused irreparable damage to its earth and nature. This is the most nuclear-bombarded place on earth, and an unimaginable amount of dark, infernal energy of grief, horror, dehumanization has accumulated here. How can this energy be transformed so that it does not lead to disastrous wars, killings, and destruction, but gives people the power to create and transform the world?
ORTA Collective, a transdisciplinary artistic group from Kazakhstan, decided to create a device that could do this transformation. An understanding that it is possible to create such a device originated from the New Genius philosophy, which ORTA has been developing since 2016. This science-fiction theory is founded upon the life and artistic contributions of Sergey Kalmykov (1891-1967), a Kazakhstani artist, writer, inventor, and Genius of the Absolute Interplanetary Category. The New Genius considers genius as a practice anyone can perform as opposed to the traditional conception that attributes it to a rare, innate quality of exceptional individuals.
Having conducted a number of experiments, including the very first prototype of the “First Atomic Bombreflector” in Moscow in 2021, as well as a series of Spectacular Experiments in the LAI-PI-CHU-PLEE-LAPA Center for New Genius, which ORTA deployed in the first historical pavilion of Kazakhstan at the Venice Biennale in 2022 the collective decided to launch a large global program to purposefully create the world's first device called the Great Atomic Bombreflector or simply the Bombreflector. Just as the first atomic bomb was once created, the time has come to create the first Atomic Bombreflector!
The first Spectacular Experiments in New York are supported by CultureHub as one of the 5 international GABR centers. Spectacular Experiments are performative immersive events utilizing the following science fiction technologies: a special between-worlds reading of texts and singing by a conductor-performer, subtle light and optical gimmicks, New Genius music and sound environment, engineered devices for recording the energy of genius, canvases of traditional Kazakh embroidery, and renderings of Genion particles are all inside the total installation of the New Genius architecture. The goal is complete immersion in the universe of the New Genius and excitation of genius of each spectator who will become a real experimenter. The trials are designed to investigate ways to generate and store genius energy for use in full-scale field testing of the Bombreflector on August 29, 2024 in Kazakhstan steppe.
Photo by Sabina Kuangaliyeva
ORTA Collective © ORTA Collective / Courtesy of the Artist
Lab Experiments of The Great Atomic Bombreflector in Almaty Centre
New Genius conductor/medium Alexandra Morozova testing the GABR data recording device.