Xiren is an interdisciplinary project that builds a DIY siren as a performance instrument, sounding an alarm about the “slow violence” of radioactive dust carried from the Algerian Sahara into Europe.
This lecture performance draws on research showing that the dust is more than a weather event. It carries the residue of French nuclear testing in colonial Algeria and keeps moving it across borders, decades after the tests ended.
Over thirty minutes, the live presentation weaves together video, sound, maps, satellite data, archival material and field footage from La Hague, France. As voice and sound build up in layers, the room begins to resemble the circulation of the dust itself. In the final moment, Xiren ver.0, a mechanical siren driven by nothing but air and rotation, begins to wail, and the project’s central metaphor becomes something heard and felt in the body.
