Ten Minutes to Midnight

Two nights. Three venues. Six decades of cover-up.

A team of leading Australian artists will bring South Australia’s chilling atomic history to life in a dynamic transmedia event premiering in Balaklava for the 2015 Adelaide Fringe Festival. Ten Minutes to Midnight audiences will experience Australia’s atomic test stories via an immersive projection installation, new digital artworks, and an exhibition of contemporary photomedia, rare archival artifacts, and footage.

Run over two days, across three venues in the South Australian town of Balaklava, the multi-arts event also includes curriculum-linked schools activities and speakers program. Public sessions are 7-9pm Friday 13th and Saturday 14th February 2015, and 4-6pm Saturday 14th February.

Tickets@ www.adelaidefringe.com.au or  1300 621 255.
Enquiries:  info@nuclearfutures.org

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About the Production

Ten Minutes to Midnight sits at the creative junction between historical fact, eye-witness testimony and artistic interpretation.

The original and experimental artworks showcased in Ten Minutes to Midnight respond to the slow public reveal and long-term legacies arising from the British run atomic experiments at Emu Field and Maralinga in South Australia, and Monte Bello in Western Australia, during the 1950s and 60s.

Ten Minutes to Midnight is the culmination of a collaborative partnership between the creative artist team and representatives from Australian atomic survivor communities. The creative team includes Award-winning artists Teresa Crea, John Romeril, Luke Harrald, Nic Mollison, Jessie Boylan and Linda Dement.

Teresa Crea, South Australian Artistic Director for the Ten Minutes to Midnight installation comments:
“So powerful were the events of Maralinga and so profound their impact on us as artists  – that it felt necessary to intertwine the real events with our response as artists.  All of us remain implicated in this history and its legacy.”

One local source of inspiration is nuclear veteran and whistleblower Avon Hudson. Avon is a leading public campaigner for nuclear veterans’ rights, a writer, and previously long serving member of Wakefield Regional Council. It was in Avon’s Balaklava living room, where piled high is a campaigner’s treasure trove of significant and rare archival material, that the Ten Minutes to Midnight production began one year ago.

As well as exploring the horror of the atomic age, Ten Minutes to Midnight also embodies humanitarian messages of hope, celebrating the resilient communities and individuals who continue to pursue recognition and justice, and courageously share their stories for the benefit of future generations.

The timing of the premiere coincides with the 70-year anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, events that continue to impact through long-term genetic damage from nuclear radiation.

Ten Minutes to Midnight has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and Arts SA. It is presented as part of the three-year international arts and cultural program, Nuclear Futures, exposing the legacies of the atomic age through the creative arts. Nuclear Futures is led by Sydney-production company Alphaville and Creative Producer Paul Brown.

For more information contact:  info@nuclearfutures.org .