Let Me Count the Ways is composed of short segments compressed into a 20-minute exploration of the lead-up to, the confusion about, and the aftereffects of the Hiroshima bombing. The title simultaneously references the countdown to the dropping of the bomb and suggests anticipation. Minus 10 juxtaposes footage of the artist’s father in los Alamos and on the way to Tinian island with an interview with a woman in Japanese about the bombing. Minus 9 aligns an American nurse’s eye- witness account of the bombing and its aftermath with aerial landscape shots blocked by a blinking blue circle which could represent a mutant sun, an eye, planet Earth, an afterimage, or the inverted “rising sun” of Japanese national symbolism. Minus 8 and Minus 7 show excerpts from a documentary, The Growth of Plants (c.1950), overlaid by running text describing radiation-induced botanical mutations. In recalling past histories of warfare, Thornton’s current work urges the reexamination of contemporary politics, and artistic practice, by building delicately balanced emotional and narrative arguments. (Trinie Dalton)
