Among the Palms, the Bomb, or: Looking for Reflections in the Toxic Field of Plenty

Since 2017, the Austrian artist Lukas Marxt has spent a considerable amount of time in Southern California, where he studied the Salton Sea, a unique ecosystem where, in just four years, the water level has fallen by a good half a meter, allowing for predictions about when it will completely dry up. The Salton Sea is also the site where the United States tested numerous atomic bombs during the final phases of World War II and and the Cold War, initially in preparation for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, later as training for missions that fortunately never took place. In Among the Palms, created in collaboration with Serbian artist Vanja Smiljanic, the sociopolitical implications surrounding this particular ecosystem emerge, such as intensive agriculture and the consequent exploitation of illegal agricultural workers from Latin America, who then seek refuge in Native American reservations. The film begins in Utah, where military planes once took off, and in the town of Wendover, where the Nuclear Museum that preserves “Fat Man” and “Little Boy,” the models of the two atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then, moving south to California, the artists interview local experts who explain the landscape and history, as well as members of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, who were victims of genocide in the 19th century. Their survivors now recall the healing powers of plants and how they were part of a life closely connected with nature that once grew around the salty waters of the Salton Sea. Today, the area is covered by saltbush, and beneath the surface, ticks the uranium from the Cold War.