Re-enacting memory: an exploration of ritual in art and science in the context of a proposal for the burial of radioactive waste in Sardinia

Abstract. Focusing on a proposal to build a nuclear waste repository in Sardinia, Italy, the paper introduces artistic research and the author's artwork Canticle of the Nuclear Sun, which explores the ancient practice of Cantu a Tenore: a form of polyphonic singing for four voices, through a ritual created to transmit knowledge about nuclear waste. In the artwork, the re-enacted ritual is conceived as a repetition of forgotten instructions that overlaps with the remnants of an ancient prayer, thereby failing to convey a clear message about the nature of the waste already at the moment of its creation. Through an analysis of how ritual operates across disciplines and modalities, “scientific rituals” are identified as practices that function in the same way as religious rituals: by filling gaps in human knowledge, they confer meaning to the ungraspable and the overwhelming aspects of nuclear heritage practices. Rituals thus become the sacred and mundane of nuclearity, an invocation for certainty and protection from unknown forces, and a plea for continuity when facing the incommensurable.