BLAST RADIUS: No. 4 in a Series of Data Humanization Performances
Abstract
At around 7:30pm on April 13, 2017 the US government dropped the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb near the Moman Dara Village in the Asadkhel area in the Achin district of Nagarhar province in eastern Afghanistan. Nicknamed the "Mother of All Bombs" the weapon is the largest non-nuclear weapon in the US arsenal, with a blast radius, meaning the area in which serious effects on people and structures can be felt, of a mile. While the MOAB was the largest weapon released, it was but one of 4,361 air weapons that targeted Afghanistan during 2017, according to US Air Forces Central Command declassified airpower summaries.
At 7:30am on April 13, 2018, the anniversary of this event, I walked a path equivalent to the blast radius of MOAB on land in Arizona. This walk memorialized the civilians killed, the villages terrorized, the populations forced to migrate, and the lands scarred as a result of the endless wars being carried out in the name of protecting US citizens.