Video Art Programme:  
Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani “Contaminated Home” 2021

Fischer und el Sani “Contaminated Home” 2021

Fischer & el Sani in Zusammenarbeit mit Bertold Stallmach, Der Dreisatz der Identität, 2016, Filmstill, HD Video, 20 Min. © Fischer & el Sani und VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021

Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Contaminated Home, 2021, Film still, digital video, colour, stereo, 22 min.,  © Fischer & el Sani und VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021

Ten years after the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, the video work Contaminated Home recalls its aftermath. The film consists of photographs of a Japanese family that was forced to leave their home, 23 km from the damaged power plant, after the nuclear disaster on 11 March 2011. After self-evacuating to Kyoto, the family regularly returns to their home with a photo camera and a Geiger counter to document the transformation of the site and measure the radiation.

Fischer & el Sani have documented the visits to the protagonists’ contaminated home in ongoing interviews. The photographs of the house, collected over the years and edited into a film, become a disturbing cinematic family album of a life at a standstill through its manifested uninhabitability.

Nina Fischer (*1965 in Emden) and Maroan el Sani (*1966 in Duisburg) have been working together since 1993 in film and photography projects that focus primarily on urban spaces and collective memory. As a duo, they have participated in numerous international exhibitions, including Manifesta 13, Marseille 2020, Videonale, Bonn 2019, Media City Seoul Biennale 2014, 2012, Istanbul Biennale 2007, Liverpool Biennale 1999, and the Berlin Biennale 1998. Fischer and el Sani live and work in Berlin.