I am an interdisciplinary visual artist who builds transformative experiences and environments that encourage empathy through a shared emotional exploration. My work primarily utilizes drawing, hand-made objects, digital media, site-specific installations, and socially engaged, participatory events that overlap and intersect in order to create the desired impact. Over the last decade, my work has focused on shared worldwide issues, such as climate change and nuclear war, in order to investigate empathetic responses that emerge from global threats and existential fear. Through my work, I seek an antidote to this fear. In an effort to find this antidote, I cultivate empowerment through shared experiences, tools, and actions and to see how fear responds to this cultivation. 

Originally conceived as a singular public 100-mile bicycle and data collection ride, Hot Zone transformed due to the unpredictability of a global pandemic into a collective on-going experience. Hot Zone uses observation and data collection to examine a 100-mile stretch of land, river, and communities between and around nuclear power plants in so-called Minnesota. This work artistically addresses the potential threat of radioactive contamination in our environment while also exploring the ways we are accountable for the waste we create as we benefit from the energy it produces.

The Twin Cities lie between two nuclear power plants in Monticello and Prairie Island, Minnesota, that provide about 30% of all power in the state. These sites store all of their nuclear waste on-site in cooling pools and temporary steel/concrete “dry cask storage.” As there are currently no available locations in the US for long-term radioactive waste disposal, all this waste sits within 50 miles of over 3 million people in the Twin Cities. 

Surrounding each nuclear plant are 2 zones that detail how to respond in the event of a radiation release: the 10 mile radius “Emergency Planning Zone” and the 50 mile “Ingestion Pathway Zone.” I am morbidly curious how the wind and water that surrounds these plants will affect these perfect circles and change their shape. If you look at the Chernobyl and Fukushima-Daiichi exclusion zones, the elements have transported the radiation far beyond the initial 10 and 20 km exclusion zones, respectively. From this curiosity, I began creating wind socks as a visual reminder of the power of the wind. Over the past few months, as wind has brought in heavy smoke from wildfires north and west of us, I have been reminded of how powerful the wind can be at both dispersal and concentration.

Another curiosity that guides this work is what we will find when looking carefully at the plants and small insects of this 100-mile area? While I certainly hope to not find evidence of radioactive contamination, Hot Zone calls attention to the minutiae of the landscape, the fragility of the ecosystem, and our dependence on the river for our survival. This work is created in solidarity with the water protectors working tirelessly to stop the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline from crossing the waterways just north of this project area. Both nuclear power plants have had minor dispersals of radioactive materials into the surrounding environments during their 50 years of operation, and the possibility for future contamination and potential for devastation remains and will persist, even decades after their closures, slated for 2040. This summer’s AOV project is a small first step in exploring this space, an exploration and monitoring that is ongoing and persistent. What will we find when we return to the river every summer?

This work is an open invitation to others to join me. Send drawings and photos of plants, insects, and water to hotzone@kelleymeister.com. Tag them #MNhotzone on social media. Find these and more data points at hotzone.kelleymeister.com.