From 1949 through 1989, Kazakhstan, then a Soviet colony, was subjected to more than 600 inhumane nuclear and thermonuclear explosions. These tests ruined the lives of more than 1.5 million people and caused irreparable ecological damage. The bowels, surface, and atmosphere of Kazakhstan are the most nuclear-bombarded spot on the Earth, and an unimaginable amount of dark, infernal energy of grief, horror, and dehumanization has accumulated there. How can this energy be transformed so that it does not lead to more disastrous wars, killings, and destruction, but gives people the power to transform the world into a better place, especially now when many believe that we are on a brink of nuclear apocalypse?

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​The Great Atomic Bombreflector is a sci-fi device that aims to accomplish this transformation. The author of this device is the first Kazakhstani avant-garde artist, writer, inventor, thinker, and the Genius of the Absolute Interplanetary Category Sergey Kalmykov (1891-1967), who invented the Atomic Bombreflector in the 1930s, prophetically declaring the horrors of atomic weapons. From his ideas and life, ORTA has been developing The New Genius Theory (or, simply, the New Genius)—a unique approach to life and creativity that sees genius as a practice anyone can perform as opposed to the traditional exclusive conception that attributes it to a rare, innate quality of exceptional individuals. The New Genius was presented to the world at the 59th Venice Biennale of contemporary art where ORTA were curators and participants of Kazakhstan's first ever national pavilion. Their project LAI-PI-CHU-PLEE-LAPA Center for New Genius was dedicated to Sergey Kalmykov who won great attention from an international audience and major publications thereby fulfilling the prophecy he wrote while living his life in poverty, loneliness and obscurity: "No artist has had a happiness that I have had! I am a professional genius unknown today, but I will remain for ages together with Picasso and Da Vinci!"

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One of the key engines of the Great Atomic Bombreflector is the "Universal (people's) sci-fi Composition of reality" as it almost happened during the blossom of the sci-fi genre in the late 19th-early 20th century when the "authors" —artists, writers, inventors—fantasized the future, space flight, discoveries of unknown worlds, and unseen technologies. Those authors were not necessarily scientists or engineers, but the world we live in today is vastly outlined and determined by their ideas and visions. We believe, today, everyone can take part in the composition of our reality.

 

The Great Atomic Bombreflector is a spectacle-ritual for as many as one thousand participants who will perform the transformation of the energies of Atomic Inhumanity into the colossal power of upliftment that is stored in every human and non-human being as genius. The creation of the complex spectacle-ritual will take two years and multiple experiments, research expeditions, discussions, contributions from dedicated searchers and practitioners from various fields and places on Earth. It is planned to be conducted in 2026 in the land of Kazakhstan. The successful conduction of the Great Atomic Bombreflector will mean the start of the chain reaction of freeing the energy of genius of all the people of the world.

 

The Planetary Program of the Great Atomic Bombreflector was launched at the legendary La MaMa Experimental Theater Club on June 22, 2024.

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Articles​

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Without Claims to Purity: The Great Atomic Bombreflector and Its Designers (en)

What does it mean to be a test subject for power, which, outside this concrete example, might actually name the catastrophic state of being a human-subject under state sovereignty generally? If the concept of a "state of emergency" can be applied to the Semipalatinsk nuclear tragedy, how can this trauma be turned into a "real" state of emergency, to borrow Walter Benjamin's encouragement to take up revolutionary activity? What does such a "real" state of emergency look like? Not a concrete emergency, but rather something that demonstrates the hidden paradigms of political space that are crucial to modernity.

In this essay I consider these questions through a discussion of a series of "Spectacular Experiments" that inspired the long-term artistic project Planetary Program of the Great Atomic Bombreflector, which was launched last spring at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York.

Nov 2024, Anna Gorskaya, e-flux Journal, Issue #149

 

The Great Atomic Bombreflector (ru)

В июне 2024 года в легендарном нью-йоркском театре La MaMa состоялись первые Спектакулярные Эксперименты арт-группы ORTA в рамках Планетарной Программы по созданию Великого Атомического Бомбоотражателя – большого международного научно-фантастического проекта, в котором Теория Новой Гениальности, разрабатываемая ORTA, применяется к ужасающему наследию атомных испытаний в Казахстане. В представленном тексте я описал предпосылки проекта и причины, по которым он возможен, его механизм и прогресс на сегодняшнюю дату – к 75-летию первого ядерного взрыва в Казахстане.

28 Sep 2024, Rustem Begenov, Vlast.kz

 

Spectacular Experiments on the Great Atomic Bombreflector (en)

In June, La MaMa ETC and CultureHub presented Kazakhstan's ORTA Collective for Spectacular Experiments on the Great Atomic Bombreflector, with support from Goethe-Institut Kasachstan.

Jul 22, 2024, Maura Nguyen Donohue, CULTUREBOT