Press kit · Dora Ramljak · 2026

An installation and short film on radioactive isotopes, ocean circulation and the political construction of time.

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‘The Decay of Time’ begins with a paradox: radioactive isotopes released by atmospheric nuclear weapons testing became residues of Cold War violence and tools for measuring seawater’s movement and age. Dispersed through the oceans, they enabled oceanographers to trace thermohaline circulation, the movement of seawater around the planet over centuries, driven by differences in density caused by temperature and salinity. The installation materialises this relationship in a self-sustaining vessel of seawater that recreates thermohaline circulation. Sensors translate changing water conditions into a two-channel film and soundscape, in which a swimmer’s movements — inspired by the designer’s embodied research in the Adriatic Sea — become entangled with oceanic rhythms and scientific measurement. The project explores how planetary time is not simply measured but produced through scientific instruments shaped by histories of militarisation. By bringing embodied knowledge into dialogue with these infrastructures, it traces how those histories continue to circulate through matter and measurement.

The Decay of Time investigates radioactive isotopes whose decay is used as a standardised unit for measuring time. Following atmospheric nuclear weapons testing between 1945 and 1970, these isotopes dispersed globally, embedding within ocean layers. They form a planetary residue of nuclear history and a measurement infrastructure through which oceanic movement and temporal order are mapped.

Within ocean systems, radioactive isotopes trace thermohaline circulation, a global system of seawater movement driven by temperature, salinity, and density differences. As water cools and becomes saltier it increases in density, sinks into the deep ocean, and returns to the surface over timescales of up to 1,500 years, carrying isotopic traces across the globe.

The installation centres on a water circulation loop based on thermohaline principles. Density differences are generated through heating at one end and cooling at the other, setting water into vertical motion through gravity, temperature, and density gradients. This circulation directly affects the swimmer: as circulation intensifies, the swimmer stabilises and glides; as it slows, shifting density increases resistance, producing temporal lag and fragmentation in movement.

A short film situates these processes within the standardisation of time, framing them as technopolitical infrastructures converting military violence into planetary measurement. The Decay of Time reframes time as a hybrid material process emerging from radioactive matter, ocean circulation, and embodied perception, showing time as politically constructed through nuclear history, scientific standardisation, and the translation of destruction into global knowledge, where measurement becomes both record and residue of planetary systems shaped by Cold War infrastructures and their continuing environmental afterlives across deep time and planetary scale.

High-resolution files for press use. Please credit: Dora Ramljak, The Decay of Time, 2026. Installation views: Nicole Marnati. All other images: Dora Ramljak.
More hi-res images: Design Academy Eindhoven on Flickr ↗

The Decay of Time / Raspad vremena — exhibition catalogue (EN/HR), Muzej-Museo Lapidarium, 2026. Texts by Sabina Oroshi and Dora Ramljak. Design and photographs by Dora Ramljak. ISBN 978-953-7608-64-4.

Bilingual edition: English and Croatian (EN/HR).

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Dora Ramljak (born 2001, Pula) is a Croatian transdisciplinary artist and design researcher based between Croatia and the Netherlands. Her practice explores the intersections of ecology, science, politics, and social practice. Through fieldwork, prototyping, and interdisciplinary collaboration with scientists and local communities, she investigates the entanglements between ecological systems, material processes, and human and more-than-human relations. Her research takes form through moving image, literary practice, installation, and (bio)material prototyping, bringing scientific methods into dialogue with embodied and situated forms of knowledge.

Ramljak graduated from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, with a degree in Photography and completed an MA in Geo Design at Design Academy Eindhoven. She has been a resident at V2_Lab for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam and Fabrica Research Centre in Treviso. In 2025, she received the Ivan Kožarić Award from the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, with her work Radial Drift entering the museum’s permanent collection. Her work is also held in the collection of Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna.

Press enquiries: dora.ramljak@gmail.com
doraramljak.net/the-decay-of-time