On March 11, 13 years will have passed since the triple nuclear meltdown at the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)-owned Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan. In response to the ongoing ecological contamination, a collective of artists and cultural workers established “Don’t Follow the Wind,” an exhibition that “opened” on March 11, 2015, inside the exclusion zone—the inaccessible area surrounding the nuclear power plant that is over three times the size of Hong Kong Island. Organized by eponymous collective Don’t Follow the Wind (comprising Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group, Kenji Kubota, Jason Waite, Eva & Franco Mattes), with contributing artists such as Miyanaga Aiko, Koizumi Meiro, Trevor Paglen, and Taryn Simon, the project cannot be seen in person as the area remains off-limits to the public due to high levels of radiation.

“Don’t Follow the Wind” grapples with the problem of how artists and cultural workers confront a durational disaster. Rather than acting as a time capsule left for the future, it is an active, living beacon, a mnemonic for the ongoing disaster, the effects of which will reverberate for years. But instead of abandoning the initiative, the collective enters the zone multiple times a year to care for the works and the structures, providing updates to the displaced residents, many of whom host projects in their former homes inside the zone.

This article is a series of dispatches that provide a glimpse into the changes to the project and the effects on the environment over the past year from my perspective as a curator and member of the collective.