AMONG THE PALMS THE BOMB, or: Looking for reflections in the toxic field of plenty
Register
Film Screening & Community Meetup
Thursday, December 4, 2025
5:30pm – 9:30pm
Where: Disruption Network Lab e. V., Treptower Str. 23, Berlin, 12059.
Introduced by Tatiana Bazzichelli (Artistic Director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE).
On December 4, Disruption Network Lab is organising the film screening and debate to raise awareness of the issue of nuclear testing and ecological collapse and invite our community to join. Afterwards, we will hold an informal community gathering to discuss topics and share future programme.
Achieving nuclear energy, critical minerals and technological dominance has been part of Donald Trump’s agenda since the start. In mid-2025, Israel and the U.S. conducted coordinated strikes against Iran's nuclear infrastructure to damage its nuclear programme. Donald Trump announced this month (November 2025) that the United States would restart nuclear weapons testing on an “equal basis” with other nations - alluding to unverified claims that Russia and China are conducting secret tests and suggesting the U.S. will revive programs abandoned in the early 1990s. Despite subsequent clarifications that downplayed the immediate threat, this announcement about restarting nuclear weapons testing raised fears of a new arms race, as pointed out by many newspapers (The Washington Post, The New York Times, etc.).
“Among the palms, The Bomb” is a cinematic exploration that rounds up seven-year-long research of the Salton Sea – the largest lake in California that is on the verge of ecological collapse, and the resilient community struggling to survive within this dystopian reality.
Programme:
5.30pm: Welcome to our Community and Programme Updates
6pm-7.30pm: Film Screening
7.30pm-9.30pm: Informal Community Gathering
AMONG THE PALMS THE BOMB, or: Looking for reflections in the toxic field of plenty
Documentary, 2024 (Austria, Germany), 85 min.
Directors: Vanja Smiljanić (Visual and Performance Artist, RS/PT/DE), Lukas Marxt (Artist and Filmmaker, AT/DE).
Language: English, Spanish, Cahuilla
Subtitles: English
The highest asthma rates among children in the United States, chronic nosebleeds, the haunting memories of Native American tribal genocide, the echoes of military atomic bomb tests during the Manhattan Project, the massive monocultural farming culminating in cataclysmic fish and bird die-offs, and the exploitation of illegal immigrants, are just a few of the narratives that come together and define the Salton Sea. The Historic Wendover Airfield Museum in Utah, a former military base that in 1944/45 played a pivotal role in the development of the Atomic Bomb, is the starting point of the film.
Delving into the question of who holds the right to narrate history, AMONG THE PALMS THE BOMB juxtaposes the narratives of those who have traditionally held power to shape history with the voices of tribal communities whose stories have been systematically erased over time, as well as other marginalised communities whose right to speak up has been taken away.
AMONG THE PALMS THE BOMB has local experts explain the landscape and history, and the director is looking for dissenting voices, especially among the tribe of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, who were victims of genocide in the 19th century. Their survivors now recall how many plants that had healing powers and were part of a life with nature once grew around the salty water of the Salton Sea. Now the area belongs to the salt bushes, and beneath the surface ticks the uranium of a Cold War that is about to return.
The film’s overarching mission is to ignite a collective awareness of the ongoing environmental and socio-political catastrophe that has remained concealed for years. This silence, perpetuated by society’s indifference to marginalised communities is contested by the enduring resonance of untold stories. From Native tribes to undocumented workers to dying body of water, their stories, and their land, are calling for our reaction.
About the directors:
Vanja Smiljanić (Belgrade, 1986) is a visual and performance artist living and working between Lisbon and Cologne. She concluded the post-master in Artistic research at A.pass, Brussels (2015), MFA at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI), Arnhem (2012), and Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (2019) and got a degree in Fine Arts at the Faculdade de Belas Artes de Lisboa (2009). In her practice she often utilizes the model of performance-lecture as a way to bridge fictitious and experiential universes, comprising technical apparatus, diagrams and sci-fi povera sculptures.
Lukas Marxt (Austria, 1983) is an artist and a filmmaker living and working between Cologne and Graz. Marxt´s interest in the dialogue between human and geological existence, and the impact of man upon nature was first explored in his studies of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Graz, and was further developed through his audio visual studies at the Art University in Linz. He received his MFA from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, and attended the postgraduate programme at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig.
Read more: https://sixpackfilm.com/en/catalogue/2949/
Disruption Network Lab is part of New Perspectives for Action (2023-2027). A project by Re-Imagine Europe, a collaboration between Paradiso and Sonic Acts (NL), Elevate Festival (Austria), A4 (SK), INA GRM (FR), Borealis (NO), KONTEJNER (HR), RUPERT (LT), Semibreve (PT), Parco d’Arte Vivente (IT), Disruption Network Lab (DE), BEK (NO), Kontrapunkt (MK) and Radio Web MACBA (ES). Co-funded by the European Union.