ARTISTS AGAINST THE BOMB









AATB - THE BOOK


The book features participating works and the artists biographies, along with a foreword by executive director of ICAN, Melissa Parke, a text by Pedro Reyes which reviews the history of antinuclear movements, as well as the redesigned booklet of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).




FAIRLY PAID
LOCALLY PRODUCED
HANDMADE




SAM DURANT
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These images come from a 1961 anti-nuclear protest in Germany, the artist’s year and place of birth.
Durant asks: "How is it possible that nuclear bombs are still with us? With the risk of annihilation ever greater!" Die Bombe Muss Weg Wir Wollen Leben (Ban the Bomb We Want to Live!) will remain relevant as long as the existence of nuclear weapons continues to threaten the survival of the world.
Sam Durant is an interdisciplinary artist whose research-based work addresses social, political, and cultural issues.



CENTER FOR
TACTICAL MAGIC
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The Center for Tactical Magic created Banish the Bomb and a magical exorcism, an effort to ban and expel the demonic and hegemonic forces responsible for all weapons of mass destruction. Across cultures, the owl has long been regarded as both a harbinger of death and a symbol of wisdom. Transfixed by the hypnotic gaze of the owl, beseeching us to invoke our own wisdom, we break the deadly and destructive curse of the bomb.

The Center for Tactical Magic was established in 2000 as a collaborative authoring framework dedicated to the coalescence of art, magic and creative tactics for encouraging positive social change.


BULLETIN OF THE
ATOMIC SCIENTISTS
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The Bulletin informs the public, policymakers, and scientists to reduce man-made existential threats.
Founded by scientists in 1945 after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they anticipated that the atom bomb would be “only the first of many dangerous presents from the Pandora’s Box of modern science.” They were all too correct.
Their mission was  it urged fellow scientists to shape policy and help society understand nuclear danger.

Now, the Bulletin as an independent nonprofit, shares expert analysis through its website, magazine, videos, events, and the Doomsday Clock. It focuses on nuclear risk, climate change, and disruptive tech threats we created, and can still control.


NUCLEAR
DISARMAMENT
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Gerald Holtom (1914–1985) was an English designer best known as the creator of the Peace Symbol.

He designed it in 1958 for the first Aldermaston March, a protest against nuclear weapons. It was later adopted as the official logo of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Holtom described it as an abstract self-portrait, humankind in despair, arms lowered like a peasant before a firing squad, inspired by Goya. Formally, it also represents the semaphore signals for N and D: Nuclear Disarmament.

This poster comes from a 1959 photo of the final rally at Trafalgar Square, where the symbol appears on demonstrators’ banners.


SEAN DOWER
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Sean Dower (b. 1965) revisits Zou Zou, a cabaret clown, connecting the philosophy and politics of the era of the original nuclear arms race to the present day. Dower discovered Zou Zou in 1993 when he found a videotape of a 1980s performance by the clown referencing the nuclear arms race and
space travel.

The central image features a 1993 photo of Dower impersonating Zou Zou, using props and make-up, and lyrics from When the Saints Go Marching In, a hymn linked to apocalyptic
imagery from the Book of Revelation.


ONE FLASH &
YOU'RE ASH
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This T-shirt designe is based on back-pin buttons that recall the anti-nuclear activism of the 1970s and 1980s. Slogans like this reflected the social demands against the nuclear arms race during the Cold War.


FANNY RABEL
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México está en peligro (1958) is a publication
by the Taller de Gráfica Popular featuring
engravings by Fanny Rabel, Mariana Yampolsky,
Leopoldo Méndez, and Ángel Bracho. The series warns
of the dangers of nuclear weapons and calls for
disarmament. Rabel’s image shows a distressed
woman facing a nuclear blast, with a caption about
radioactive clouds from U.S. tests in Nevada.

Fanny Rabinovich Compañez (1922–2008),
born in Łódź, Poland, arrived in Mexico in 1938.
She studied at “La Esmeralda” with Frida Kahlo
and was shaped by the country’s revolutionary
muralists, developing a socially engaged artistic
practice.