National TLC Service interim co-directors Sarah Kanouse and Shiloh Krupar will be in residence at the Obermann Center for interdisciplinary studies at the University of Iowa during the month of July. The residency will focus on research and planning for a pilot workshop to engage stakeholders in designing people’s monuments and speculative heritage trails reflecting the continued presence of nuclear weapons and wastes. These include a workbook and day-long workshop involving collaborative mapping and design that will be integrated into a pilot public program at the University of Illinois in October, 2013.
The National Toxic Land/Labor Conservation Service (National TLC Service) is an interdisciplinary art/scholarly collaboration taking the form of a ‘wishful’ federal agency dedicated to the vigilant detection and continual exposition of the domestic effects of the American nuclear state and its military environments. Bringing together strategies of participatory art and public humanities, the Service seeks to foster discovery, dialogue, and debate about the ongoing consequences of atomic militarism, with particular attention to perspectives marginalized in dominant Cold War narratives.