Toxic Bonds
by Antonia Alampi
I was raised in the 80s in a town in the region of Calabria, Italy, situated on the Tyrrhenian coast, going by the name of a woman, Paola. Jessika Khazrik was born and raised in the 90s, somewhere between Beirut and a town in the north of Lebanon that goes by the name Sahel Alma, which means ‘the coast of the scientists’. These places, and some of the scars they have left in our bodies, are what bonds us, even more so than the fact we are both workers in the complex world of the arts. Our birthplaces — like many other places in the world — have multiple and profound differences. Yet, they have historically set the scene, due to the bursting of a spectacular and generous nature, for various mythologies, stories, and invasions, as well as being places of individual and collective suffering (especially Beirut). These are places of desire and often beauty that have been the sites of religious afflatuses, pushes for progressive change and new forms of cohabitation in their surroundings. Above all, for those who do not really know these places because they have never been there or have been absent and distant from them for a long time, there is an evocation of experience via the mesmerizing and fascinating features of these regions. This is the work of a collective imagination conjuring up spectacular views of the sea, sophisticated Mediterranean cuisine, magical sunsets, and a culture of hospitality — all of which constitute a 'reality' that for decades has been more imagined than lived.
While the geopolitical interests of global and local actors transformed parts of Lebanon into a territory affected by war and destruction, the festering collaboration between organized crime, state corruption, and administrative inefficiency made vast areas of Calabria a sort of laboratory of malfeasance: a 'mother-house' of a criminal organization known as the 'Ndrangheta'. A criminal group at the same time archaic in its rituals and in the violence practiced, and very modern in managing supply and distribution of the most substantial drug trafficking on a planetary scale. Meanwhile, the state apparatus in charge of public order at a national level continues to attack the small examples of good practices in the region such as those welcoming migrants like Riace, but that is another story…
A situation, which is the result of a tangle of relationships, actions and attitudes that effectively render it possible: the limits and the loopholes of European and global trans-national policies inefficiently combating the alliance between organized crime, state corruption and fraudulent corporate policies; interests induced by poverty and the need for work; and, last but not least, unsustainable when not completely illegal lifestyles and cultural models. It is this shared experience of toxicity that brought us, as artist (Jessika), as curator (myself), as researchers, writers, and citizens of the world as we are, to address via different formal means but through research-based long-term approaches, questions and reflections around the toxic (from unearthing hidden truth, dissecting complex cases, to care and redistribution). Believing that the undisciplined space of art might allow for the 'making sense' of much of these complex stories, my commitment led to Toxic Commons: a platform that I co-founded together with architect Caroline Ektander and researcher in the environmental humanities Dr. Simone Müller, as well as the research group ‘Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy’ of the Rachel Carson Center which includes Ayushi Dhawan, Maximilian Feichtner, and Jonas Stuck. As in its own descriptive text, "Toxic Commons writes texts, organizes public programs, and acts as a body of research in and around toxic dissemination and the environmental injustice inherent to it. It is born out of a shared appeal to better understand and shed light on the fact that certain humans, non-humans, and in the long run, the Earth-system as a whole bears the burden of its intensifying spread. However, as the elusive nature of the toxic is often hard to grasp and represent and even more so because the violence that it spreads is so slow and unspectacular, it is crucial to approach the subject with an interdisciplinary lens. Therefore, Toxic Commons aims to strengthen and enable the collaboration between visual artists, cultural producers, and scientific researchers around the complex relation between the causes and effects of toxic movement as well as give space to its implicit contradictions." It is via the interest and commitment to this research that I finally met Jessika Khazrik, and precisely because of this work that she asked me to act as her mentor within the framework of her fellowship for Digital Earth. We also already worked together on several exhibitions on this subject, such as Deadly Affairs at Extra City in Antwerp and The Long Term You Cannot Afford. On the Distribution of the Toxic, at SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, both curated together with Caroline Ektander [1].
Now, to go back to the cases I want to examine: For decades, and still today, despite the increasing number of actions by individual activists and more and more environmental associations, the sea of much of the Tyrrhenian coast, not just Paola’s, is dirty and it stinks. The acceptance of the situation and the habit of which is likely to prevail over indignation, and although the fact that bathing is often declared prohibited does not prevent many of the residents from pretending there is nothing to be concerned with. At best, this is out of laziness or an unwillingness to come to terms with a reality that can no longer be governed. Even if for many years we have been aware of the fact that dirt of “biological” origin is only the most visible element of the problem — caused above all by poorly managed sewage treatment plants and by direct discharges from illegal buildings into the sea or in the streams — the reality is that significant quantities of toxic waste, with very high poisoning potential, have been poured into the Tyrrhenian Sea as well as many other areas of the Mediterranean. The documented sinking of notorious waste ships, better known as poison ships (“navi dei veleni”) that were loaded with substantial quantities of industrial waste, including radioactive ones (often from other countries). Thanks to the aforementioned efficiency of the local organized criminal activity, this is a business that has guaranteed a very high remuneration (for the companies that dispose, for the corrupts who did not control, for the mafias in fact), while poisoning sea beds, nearby land, and consciences (paradoxically, as shown by records, even the “residual” conscience of the criminal laborers who carried out the operations in the seashores where their own families were bathing).
Alongside the mass self-hypnosis that keeps the majority of the population silent, for the "active" protagonists of the story, we shall talk more of a hyper-capitalist blindness. Given the large amounts of money gained and spent in these traffics these players are able to buy all the necessary "collaborations" — a mechanism only called into question by the insistence in the denunciation by local environmental associations, investigative journalists, and some individual citizens (some of whom paid for inquiry with their life) as well as the work of talented magistrates and prosecutors.
In the case of Lebanon, throughout the many conversations I had with Jessika, I had figured that it was an unhealthy smell and a stench that led to the discovery of a toxic waste quarry three minutes from the house where she grew up. The place was known for the presence of “blue barrels”: visible yet anonymous elements of the landscape, whose presence could be witnessed in different places of the city and the country. Only when the acrid smell began to leak was the alarm raised which led to the discovery that the famous blue barrels contained toxic waste — most likely the result of an agreement between the Italian mafia and the Lebanese Forces. Here too, thanks to a combination of a “deficit of social attention” (due perhaps to the same reasons that can be found in Calabria), a mixture of forces led to the situation including: voluntary ignorance; a lack of underestimating the danger of the phenomenon; the will (to a large extent probably unaware) of postponing the acknowledgment into consideration of other priorities and emergencies; and of course state and corporate corruption engaged in covering up the reality in exchange of liquidity.
Thus, in both cases, light was shed on these deadly affairs only after a long time from their being concealed and only when an awakening of attention occurred in the consciences of the citizens thanks to the strong smells, followed by investigative activity. In both cases the figure of a witness and investigator emerges, later declared false or unreliable. In the Calabrese case, it is Francesco Fonti, a 'Ndrangheta boss who becomes particularly well known in 2005 due to an investigation by the newspaper L'Espresso, to which he entrusts his memorial and the first revelations on the so-called 'lost ships' (navi a perdere) that were linked to toxic waste disposal. Fonti continued to collaborate with the judiciary system throughout September 2009, when the prosecutor’s office of Paola was trying to find Cunsky, a ship that had 'sunk' in the sea of Cetraro in Calabria a few km from Paola. The sinking was carried out in collaboration with Franco Muto, head of the clan going by his name. Fonti’s testimony revealed the truth of about thirty ships loaded with toxic waste, many of which were radioactive, and most of them sunk on the coast of Southern Italy. It was thanks to his testimony that investigations into the radioactive waste racket found a form. According to Fonti, Somalia, Southern Italy, and partly Zaire and Kenya, but also Lebanon were the dustbins that had been "indicated by the socialist side", specifically by the will of Honorable de Michelis and Bettino Craxi, the former president of Italy and one of the most important Italian politicians of the 20th century.
Those were the territories in which the loads were to be sunk either in the sea or on land. His confession, however, was for a long time considered false or unreliable, because some of the ships were delayed to be located or were classified as warships. The complete details of the matter to this day have not been entirely revealed. Now, in the case of Lebanon and more specifically what Jessika is focusing on, there is another case of 'false witness-hood'. Namely with regards to Pierre Malychef, one of the three eco-toxicologists hired by the Lebanese authorities to investigate the blue barrels case. Lebanon, just like Calabria, also stands out for its ability to hide toxic waste, in this case behind the remains of real estate development, which specifically aims to disguise toxic waste as raw materials. The import of toxic waste has represented a huge source of economic gain for certain companies like Solidele, a firm sponsored by the State and responsible for the reconstruction of the center of Beirut after the war and owner of a number of landfills.
In terms of numbers, we can build a sense of scale: In 1987, during the midst of the civil war in Lebanon, members of the Lebanese militia were paid about 22 million USD by Italian mafia groups to get rid of about 15800 barrels and 20 containers of toxic waste. The waste was more or less dispersed on Mount Lebanon in various locations, including one near the house where the artist grew up. When the scandal was discovered, about a year later, Lebanese Health Minister Joseph al-Hashem hired toxicologists to investigate the case, including Malychef. Essentially, they discovered that the barrels contained industrial waste from Italy as well as medicines, plastics, lubricants, etc., that were all heavily contaminated. The authorities, however, decided not to listen to the opinion of the scientists, or rather to declare their testimony false, and then continue to use the waste, even selling it to reuse it for various things (for example, sold to mechanics for making soaps capable of removing oil-based dirt and to others resold as shampoos, toothpaste, etc.). After a meticulous investigation, including thousands of photographs taken, Malychef was actually arrested on the premise of a false testimony — possibly necessitated to contain the paranoia growing in the country once the knowledge about the blue barrels had become widespread.
What these entangled stories exemplify is the fact that the toxic is not merely visible in the materiality of things, but rather it demands a double gaze in order to be understood because, "dangerous, hostile substances lie concealed behind the harmless facades"[2]. Toxicity exists hidden behind the visible. It is not just contained within matter but it is "stimulated, constructed, rehearsed and contested through a myriad set of social, epistemological, historical, economic, material, biological and governance systems and structures. Toxicity (…) has scales, sources and consequences that manifest in situated ways"[3]. This is why it is so hard to grasp and so easy to spread. Its dissemination is violent and lethal, yet slow and unspectacular, as the relationship between cause and effect is hard to visualize. It produces cancers, physical and psychological malformations, contaminates water and land, and it exterminates animals and plants. Its violence takes time to emerge and acts and spreads in relation to other factors. It is this prolonged time that makes it difficult to draw direct links between source and consequence and to hold anyone accountable for it. "More than just a chemical change, the 'slow disaster' of toxicity is located in specific territories and premised upon and reproduced by systems of colonialism, racism, capitalism, patriarchy, and other structures that require land and bodies as sacrifice zones" [4]. It is a delayed violence that not everyone can afford to protect him or herself from. The threat of unemployment or famine and everything embedded in these conditions, make it difficult for many to be preoccupied by its deferred harm. And this delay also allows for its causes to be concealed, because the toxic can go unnoticed for a very long time or may never be identified at all. Its progression, however, is uncontainable, so we believe what is left to do is to embrace, understand, and engage with its presence on a broader scale. Understanding and engaging with its complex nature, which is, I believe, what Jessika Khazirk's work is doing: engaging with Malychef's archive of images related to his investigation. The fact that this archive will be generative of more and new works to come, different in form and nature, will enable that past event to shed a different light on the present but, even more importantly, to inform and inspire visions of the future, and ways of living in our "permanently polluted world" [5].
References:
[1] To be precise, in Antwerp Zeynep Kubat worked as assistant curator, while in Berlin Kamila Metwaly and Jasmina al-Qaisi as co-curators.
[2] Ulrich Beck, (1992), 'The risk Society; Towards a new Modernity', Sage Publication, London, pp 72
[3] Max Liboiron & Manuel Tironi & Nerea Calvillo, (2018), 'Toxic politics: Acting in a permanently polluted world', Social Studies of Science, p. 48
[4] Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR) and EDAction, 2017, Gaard, 2010; Lerner, 2010; Native Youth Sexual Health Network and Women’s Earth Alliance, 2016 cited in Max Liboiron & Manuel Tironi & Nerea Calvillo
[5] Ibidem.
About the author
Antonia Alampi is the Artistic Co-Director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin as well as the co-founder of Future Climates, a platform that aims to propose viable futures for small scale organisations of contemporary art and culture.
Prior to this, Alampi lived and worked in Cairo for a number of years where she conceived and directed the educational project 'The Imaginary School Program' (2014/15) which focused on forms of organising and institution building in the city. As well as lecturing at a number of institutions worldwide ranging from Le18 in Marrakesh to Palais de Tokyo in Paris, her writing has also appeared in a number of journals such as Art-Agenda, Ibraaz, Arte e Critica, and Flash Art International.
