Final project documentation
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Ethnography of carbon displacement
Background:
Air in cities feels different depending on what raw materials they burn for energy—this was an observation noted by Michael Pinsky during his Pollution Pods project (Pinsky, n.d.). Estonia’s accession to the EU in 2004 meant stricter air pollution regulations, this pushes the Estonian’s energy industry to undergo further reconfiguration. Whilst the material waste of oil shale ash have been reestablished its value as entertainment landscapes, certain mining working bodies have been devalued to “waste” (Kesküla, 2018). Carbon traces both the numerical embodiment of such polluting policies and the common denominator for living bodies and organics (Loeve and Vincent).
Main objectives:
How does the atmosphere record these changes in re/de-valuation of bodies and matter in this narrative of oil shale extraction? Can these quantified levels of CO2 and PM2.5/PM10 become an representation of the cyclic process of waste? I aim to conduct a systematic study of the elements of CO2 and PM2.5/PM10, in thinking about how elemental ethnography can be a method to trace their affective histories, and how they are entangled in systems of waste and extraction.
How long do these particles of waste remain the air, and how do embodied displacements experience this latent pollution, or how have they gained new rebirths? I am keeping in mind the discourse of discard studies and wasteland aesthetics, and how ‘wasting is a technique of power, broad and systematic approach to how some materials, practices, regions, and people are valued and devalued, become disposable or dominant’ (Liboiron and Lepawsky). Why are these mining workers treated as waste when their workforce is no longer desired, and they are chosen to be sacrificed? (Mbembe, 2011) These displaced bodies are not ecological migrants; rather, they are political displacement. I hypothesis that the air data of Narva oil shale infrastructures records its involvement in pollution and waste, and speculate on possible the regeneration and renewals at sites too. I am open minded to finding what becomes present at these sites of contest.
Technical description: tools, method, process
Possible fieldwork methods include observational journaling, photographic documentation, and collection of gas datas and sensorial observations (using a portable gas sensor). I would like to collaborate with other sound engineers to record other sound and smell elements for other presences that are beyond human frequencies.
Template of data : CO2, PM2.5/PM10 and more
Sites of interest/elemental tracing:
- narva, Eesti Power Plant
- Narva, Balti Power Plant
- indoor conditioned spheres/shopping centres/museums of mining /within proximities of ash mountains
- outdoor 'daily' living spaces?
- SOMPA abandoned housing blocks in the town of Kohtla-Järve/other ghost towns
References
- Kesküla, E. (2018). Waste people or value producers? Contesting bioeconomic imaginaries of oil shale mining in Estonia. Journal of Baltic Studies, 49(4), 487–505. https://doi.org/10.1080/01629778.2018.1503624
- Michael Pinsky. (n.d.). Pollution Pods. https://www.michaelpinsky.com/portfolio/pollution-pods-2/
- Printsmann, A., Sepp, M., & Luud, A. (2012). The land of oil-shale: the image, protection, and future of mining landscape heritage. In Häyrynen, S., Turunen, R., & Nyman, J. (Eds.), Locality, Memory, Reconstruction: The Cultural Challenges and Possibilities of Former Single-Industry Communities (pp. 180–196). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
- Tsing, A. L., Swanson, H. A., Gan, E., & Bubandt, N. (Eds.). (2017). Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt1qft070
- The Baltic Atlas. (2016). Baltic States Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale
- Achille Mbembe (2011) Necropolitics
- Sacha LOEVE & Bernadette BENSAUDE VINCENT, THE MULTIPLE SIGNATURES OF CARBON
- Max Liboiron and Josh Lepawsky , Discard Studies, Wasting, Systems, and Pow