Summary

Departing from personal friendship and reflection, this video letter examines the visual complexity and paradoxicality of atomic bomb imagery in China. From 1960s’ military documentary to current days’ fictions with CG effects, a visual trope of the collective “People’s Bomb” was orchestrated against the imperial evil and the wild nature of the gobi desert. Living in the Anthropocene ecological crisis, in nuclearity we may find visceral connections, endurance, disenchantment of and re-politicization of the image.