! This event is not related to our game Critical Shift !
Rhinotales was honored to support and partially fund the sound performance in the city of Karaganda.
On July 12, a powerful and emotional sound-art performance titled "T 1/2 (Time of Half-Life)" took place in Karaganda, dedicated to the memory of nuclear testing at the Semipalatinsk Test Site.
The number 498 refers to the 498 nuclear explosions conducted there between 1949 and 1989 - one of the gravest and least acknowledged human-made disasters of the 20th century.
Artists Kamila Narysheva (kz) and Vicki Clarke (uk) created the work after a research trip to the former test site. Kamila expected desolation, but instead found a paradox: contaminated, restricted land coexisting with wild, living nature.
The piece opens with real sounds from the site a dog barking, snow crunching raw echoes from a haunted landscape.
At school, many of us were briefly told about a test site and shown disturbing images.
Then we turned the page.
Few of us grasped the true scale.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 2 bombs.
Semipalatinsk - 498.
Some of our own team at Rhinotales have family roots in nearby regions - 80 to 130 km from the epicenter.
People were told: “Lie down, cover yourself with a felt carpet (koshma), and when the wind dies down, you can get up.”
And they obeyed.
This is not just a story for those in Semey.
It is part of our shared past, our collective responsibility, and a legacy we must acknowledge if we hope to move forward.
“While working on this piece, Vicki Clarke hadn’t initially considered the UK’s role. Britain didn’t test on its own land. It tested in Australia far away. But it was involved.”
Nuclear tests conducted:
UK – 45
France – 210
China – 45
USSR – 715
USA – 1,054
We chose to support this performance not because it's related to our game, but because it took place in our country, and because it speaks to something much deeper.
Art can give voice to silence, and remembrance to tragedy.
We are grateful to the artists and everyone who attended.
Let us remember and protect what remains.