Tenemos miedo a las nubas (Wir haben Angst vor den Wolken)

The Spanish artist e1000 has tagged his way through major European cities. Often unrecognisable at first glance, his name adorns a variety of structures in urban spaces, such as grilles, manhole covers and railings. Once identified as such, however, the artist’s predominantly neon-coloured signature is to be found almost everywhere – as here, for example, on steel rebar rods that have been fashioned to convey a message. When illuminated with black light, these words become visible: “Tenemos miedo a las nubes” (“We’re scared of the clouds”).
The work tells of the inhabitants of Samalayuca  in the desert south of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. In 1983, scrap metal contaminated with the radioactive isotope cobalt-60 from an unused radiotherapy unit was scrapped and processed into rebars, which were then used to make reinforced concrete in housebuilding. Before long, the new inhabitants of such dwellings began to complain of sickness and pain, particularly on cloudy days. A year later, when a truck transporting the contaminated rebars happened to drive past the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a radiation detector registered the presence of radioactivity. After few years later, it was discovered that the incidence of cancer at affected locations exceeded the norm by over 80 percent. And so it was that a radiotherapy unit, originally intended for treatment, ended up causing numerous cases of cancer.

 [S1]@Redaktion. Ortsname im Original ist fehlerhaft: "Samalayuca" statt "Samalayca". Auch die Darstellung ist etwas verkürzt und zum Teil irreführend. Das Strahlentherapiegerät ist nicht eingeschmolzen(!) sondern verschrottet worden, wodurch Pellets von Cobalt-60 in die Umgebung des Schrottplatzes gelangt sind. Dies hat zu einer Kontaminierung von Altmetall geführt, das später zu Armierungseisen verarbeitet wurde. Scheinbar ist auch der Ort Samalayuca nur insofern vom Belang, dass erst später dort ein Endlager für das kontaminierte Material aus den nachträglich demolierten Gebäuden entstanden ist.

Jeanette Dittmar