(U.S.A.)
Acord is the only person licensed to work with radioactive material, and is likely to remain so since the authorities have now closed the loopholes. The world's first nuclear sculptor has spent years learning how to execute the most modern alchemy: the conversion of radioactive waste into inert material and subsequently into sculptures.
The extraordinary convolutions he has gone through to try to achieve his dream, cast light on how society cloaks the nuclear industry in a dense cloud of security and secrecy. His work is a story of a 20-year-long performance which inevitably exposes the "disinterested complicity" implicit in the dominant representations of the nuclear era and confronts this near mythical fiction favoured by sheer ignorance.
UPDATE: James Acord passed away on January 8th, 2011. RIP
http://jameslacord.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Acord