Redistribute Toxicity

Abstract

Redistribute Toxicity was a commissioned art piece created by visual artist Jonas Staal in close collaboration with environmental historian Jonas Stuck and curator and researcher Caroline Ektander, and later enriched by the knowledge and practices of seed librarian, artist, and activist Zayaan Khan for the exhibition The Long Term You Cannot Afford: On the Distribution of the Toxic at SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin in 2019. Informed by historical research on the trade of hazardous waste between the two Germanys during the Cold War—with a particular focus on the landfill Vorketzin, which served as West Berlin’s primary hazardous waste disposal site during the division—the art commission asked us to consider what an act of redistribution of a toxic past could look like. Similar to other waste practices premised on systems of externalization, the one that transpired between a divided Germany resulted in an asymmetrical impact on human, animal, and plant lives populating the former East—effects that are till this day hard to account for. The research process generated a series of designs that exposed the various practical and ethical issues entangled with acts of retribution and helped shape a project that became less concerned with correcting the past and more committed to reconfiguring toxic relations in the present. The final installation design propagated seeds from the wetland vegetation surrounding the landfill. This wild vegetation had not only become implicated in Germany’s toxic history as silent witnesses but had also helped remediate the soils over time.