Fugitive Emissions
2018. MA Dissertation. Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London.
This project is the result of a year-long investigation into the effects of open-pit mining in the Haut-Katanga province, Democratic of Congo. This body of research seeks to debunk the misconceptions that metals are immobile, when in reality, ‘trace metals’ (those metals existing in concentrations less than 0.1% in the Earth’s crust) are often as prone to movement as the air and water around us. This is because trace metals are ‘chemical elements’, the building blocks of the periodic table and the Earth as we understand it. As the such, the pollutants produced through open-pit mining, in the forms of aerosol emissions or waste stockpiles, cannot adequately be considered the stagnant byproducts of industrial processes. In reality, these pollutants are a highly intricate composition of trace metals (such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, copper, cobalt, etc.), and because of the nature of their chemical form, are capable of persisting and migrating at local, regional, or cross-continental scales. Furthermore, because of their base form as periodic elements, they do not deteriorate into a less toxic state with their environment like other forms of pollutants, but instead perpetually cycle through earth systems once they have been extracted from the lithosphere. They drift through the air, creep through the soil, flow between rivers, are absorbed by plants and are ingested or inhaled by those populations in their proximity. They evaporate, precipitate, and at time idle for decades within the soil, only to later be remobilised by natural events such as floods or storms. [ + more ]
'Unless the Water is Safer than the Land'
2017 ‘Live Project’ at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London. In collaboration with MA Candidates and Global Legal Action Network (GLAN).
Over the course of four weeks, twenty MA students conducted in-depth research into Australia’s immigration policies and practices at sea, producing spatial and visual analysis that reveals a striking pattern of human rights violations taking place off the coasts of Australia.
The Live Project was conducted in partnership with the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), whose February 2017 communication to the International Criminal Court (ICC) called for the launch of an official investigation into the abuse of asylum seekers in offshore detention facilities in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. The aim of this collaboration is to provide GLAN with further elements of evidence that would allow it to continue addressing the legality of Australia’s immigration policy before and beyond the camps, and to push the Court into shifting its focus from ‘spectacular’ violence to ‘banal’ or ‘normalised’ violence that appears as an inevitable by-product of global social and economic structures.
In investigating and reconstructing these events, students developed creative forensic methodologies to cross-reference already available research when available and in particular to overcome the overall lack of information, which is a consequence of the Australian government’s policy of “on-sea” secrecy. Their work also involved tracking and exploring the development of particular patterns of practice at sea and situating these patterns in relation to the shifting political context in which they occurred, as well as inserting them within the longer histories of settler colonial violence. [ + more ]
Logistical Nightmares
2018. Film done in collaboration with the Centre for Research Architecture class of 2018. Goldsmiths, University of London.
The experimental documentary FUTURELAND produced by the MA students in Conflicts & Negotiations (2017-18) emerges out of fieldwork they conducted in the Port of Rotterdam, Europe’s largest cargo and container port, as well as individual research and collaborative writing that delved into the politics of our contemporary logistical condition. Organised by an elliptical structure, the documentary cross-cuts between temporalities and geographies to explore the ways in which the Port is deeply entangled with the histories of colonialism, the legacies of maritime labour, the advent of automation, the speculative fictions of global finance, the threat of sea level rise, and the ecological consequences of an infrastructural imagination that has carved a trading zone out of the liquid architecture of the sea. The documentary utilises a wide range of source material from webcam streams to archival documents in addition to footage, animations, field recordings, and voiceover narration produced by the students themselves.
Its title — FUTURELAND — derives from the main public entry point into the Port of Rotterdam where visitors depart on scheduled bus and boat tours. We too began our day on water touring the docked ships and observing the cranes as they manoeuvred their containers. “Ask me anything,” our guide enjoined us… when we paused to take pictures from our vantage point on the upper deck he resumed his running commentary. It was a recital scripted entirely in superlatives: the biggest, the tallest, the deepest, the heaviest, the largest, the greenest. Throughout the FutureLandvideo echoes of his speech come to act as a refrain that the various chapters utilise to call into question the official public narratives of the Port, which are ultimately countered by the students’ own insights and approach to their research materials.
In addition to exploring the logistical operations of the Port itself, students also bicycled around the adjacent industrial park documenting its petro-chemical storage, which constitutes some of the primary cargo that transits through the Port. Other students were able to interview Filipino mariners on shore-leave as well as dockworkers in a local pub. A representative from the labour union, who was deeply concerned about the loss of jobs both at sea and on land as a consequence of automation, was interviewed later in Amsterdam. The MA students were joined by our PhDs as well as invited guests: Stefan Helmreich, Heather Paxson, Giorgio Grappi, Víctor Muñoz Sanz, Evelina Gambino, and Oscar Pedraza. Christina Sharpe kindly agreed to act as a respondent to the first public screening of the documentary at Goldsmiths on 23 May 2018.Our work in the Netherlands was generously supported by the organisation and staff at the Sonic Acts Academy, Amsterdam 2018.
As a collaborative project, the resulting video documentary and companion reader exemplifies the spirit of peer-to-peer learning and stands as a significantset of documents to have emerged out of this year’s MA programme in Research Architecture.
Susan Schuppli, Director, Centre for Research Architecture [ + more ]