Bruce Conner, Still from Crossroads, 1976

Bruce Conner’s Crossroads was made a year after the fall of Saigon, an event that marked the end of American fighting in Vietnam. The video features government archival footage of the United States Military’s nuclear weapons testing program Operation Crossroads, which was carried out in Bikini Atoll during the summer of 1946. Over the course of thirty-six minutes, the work depicts the mushroom cloud from an underwater bomb blast unfolding in extreme slow motion, accompanied by a soundtrack that alternates between incidental noises and explosions and Minimalist music composed by Patrick Gleeson and Terry Riley. Crossroads is a poetic meditation on the unfathomable destruction brought on by the Atomic Age as well as the effects of both the Cold War and the Vietnam War on the American psyche.