Devin Fitchwell
Broken Bridges | Broken Bridges began as a documentary project using a variety of materials. I used my own images of my Nana’s home and abandoned Westinghouse Nuclear Research sites around Pittsburgh, audio recordings of my interviews with my nana, found imagery, and documents to create a dialogue between myself and my Nana about my Uncle Jimmy dying of cancer. Jimmy worked for Westinghouse's Nuclear Energy division headquartered down the street from his home in Pittsburgh. During his time there, he was a proud laborer that worked on cleaning out the flooded reactors at Three Mile Island (TMI), as well as a flooded reactor in Belgium. In 2017 while on his deathbed, Jimmy attempted to join a lawsuit against Westinghouse in hopes of using his portion of the settlement to pay for his cancer treatment. Jimmy provided work IDs, and work itineraries, and even recalled a time when his hazmat suit was ripped open by an employee who was having a panic attack while they were in a flooded reactor chamber. Jimmy was denied settlement as the legal team in charge of distributing settlement could not prove the workers assigned to TMI and other reactors were exposed to material that could cause such health problems as the ones he was experiencing.
“During the Job at Doel Nuclear Plant, A Laborer had a violent panic attack which required me to physically remove him from the bottom of Reactor Vessel. Upon completion of removal, I noticed my plastic face mask had a huge crack/break in it. The Health/Physics Man told me “not to worry about it”
-taken directly from Jimmy Fitchwells legal claim paperwork.
One of the major functions of Art is to speak truth to Power. There needs to be a conversation concerning the casualties of innovation driven by capitalism and the consequences that are dumped on to the working population. In cases like my uncle, they are kept from the truth entirely. The only way I was given access to this story was by interviewing my Nana and going through documents my uncle Jimmy happened to keep to remember his time working for Westinghouse. In fact, there is little to no documentation of Westinghouse's involvement with TMI available on the internet–everything I've learned is from documents that Jimmy happened to save and interviews with my nana and former employees of Westinghouse in the Pittsburgh area. The reason I've spent years pursuing this creative work is that it is the only option I have to express what little was left by Westinghouse. In circumstances where the corporation is able to determine “truth”, such as the Westinghouse settlement, the outcome is that the prior truth of the people swept up in these systems is erased. There are no accessible records of what material Jimmy handled, and thus the “truth” is that he did not handle any material that could have caused his specific cancer. Jimmy’s truth may be lost forever, and it is because of this loss that my work here must be creative and speculative in nature. In a way, I’m attempting to create mythology as a counterpoint to the fact received via the official story. Such lost battles are common and becoming more so. The relevance of these conversations and the power of the myths crafted therein, increase in tandem with both the authority of the corporation(s) and the severity of their negligence. My hope is that by presenting this work to as many people as possible they will feel the pain my Nana felt, and will be encouraged to look around them and understand that this story is not rare and that it is being retold all around them every day. It is not a conspiracy. It is in the nature of corporations to create these disasters as we allow them to function in this country. www.devinfitchwell.com
