Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter/Snack Bar by Michael Smith Jonathan Dorado/MOMA
On a recent trip to New York, I visited the Museum of Modern Art for the first time. What really stood out for me was the installation by Michael Smith, an artist who satirises life in the US as his character “Mike”.
His target here is a real plan from 1983, during the cold war, for a snack bar that doubles as a fallout shelter. It is all set in Mike’s basement, which contains a variety of ways to help pass a nuclear winter. There is even a playable – though crucially, unwinnable – arcade game called Mike Builds a Shelter.
It felt like walking onto the set of an amusing yet eerie film, reminiscent of the animation When the Wind Blows (based on Raymond Briggs’s graphic novel, in which an elderly couple dutifully follow official guidelines after a nuclear attack).
That film is more heartbreaking than the humorous snack bar, but both work effectively to highlight the folly and futility of nuclear war.
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