FILM & VIDEO

“This place is not a place of honour. No esteemed deeds are commemorated here. This is not a place for you. What is here is dangerous and repulsive. The danger will still be present in your time, as it is in ours.”

These are the sentences that future man will meet if he finds and opens the gigantic network of underground tunnels which are presently being hewn out of the bedrock in Finland. The tunnels will be filled with high-level radioactive waste, which must be kept isolated from human beings and other live organisms for at least 100.000 years into the future so as not to render large areas uninhabitable.

Not only must the facility last 10 times longer than any manmade construction ever, it must also be able to resist all thinkable climate changes, erosion, evolution. The real challenge, however, is to secure the facility from human intrusion. To succeed with that is vital in order to keep future man safe and prevent the waste from escaping into the biosphere. When the waste has been deposited, the facility will be sealed off, never to be opened again. But can we ensure that? How is it possible to warn future man of the waste we left behind? How do we prevent them from thinking they have found the pyramids of our time, mystical burial grounds, hidden treasures? Which languages and signs will they understand, and if they understand, will they respect our instructions?