Spoiled Waters Spilled observes the organic circulation of flowing substances such as water and air, which exceed states’ borders while being slowly and often spectacularly poisoned at the local level by human activity. Bringing together artists addressing issues related to toxicity, circulation and water (and rivers in particular) in Marseilles and beyond, some of whom also engage with activism and protest, the project considers how industrial, agricultural and domestic pollutants disrupt the ‘postcard-dream’ image used by cities to promote themselves. The environmental reality of such cities is often quite the reverse: one of degraded rivers, soils, sediments and waters where bodies of all kinds are contaminated.

The multiplication of landfill sites continues – some open-air, many unauthorized, in both urban zones and nature reserves – and a lack of hazardous waste management persists at local, national and global levels. Whether the poisoning is obvious to us or not, the planet’s biodiversity is being strongly adversely affected, and the need for environmental rehabilitation has become pressing. When they are not actively camouflaging the persistent effects of contaminants on health and the environment, national governments, so often characterized by their collusion with corporations, tend to simply turn a blind eye to the situation. Yet residues of the pollution embedded in the current capitalist system continue to percolate, travelling with air particles, in river currents, and through our own veins. As we consider how to decontaminate bodies and ecosystems, the specters of ecological collapse, viral infection and – as we have seen recently – pandemic are more present than ever. Can we be inured to toxicity as an unavoidable fact? Or must we unite in an effort to fight back against it?

The exhibition also aims to explore the growing tension between the need for transnational responses to anthropogenic climate change and the enforcement by some nation states of ever stricter border policies, which serve to exclude ‘others’ and often further externalize ecological problems. Rather than opting for environmental protection measures, governments often insist on demarcation, obliquely fomenting fear while denying the reality of the circulation of harmful substances, as if toxicity could be forced to recognize state borders. The entanglement of borders and material circulation is addressed by Elisabeth A. Povinelli in her writing on the toxic destruction created by late liberalism. The places and powers that have been historically responsible for the colonial extraction of resources remain inevitably linked to the sites of extraction. “Europe, and by extension the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, etc., built itself from externalizing its expansion into and onto the bodies of others. It ate up and shat out others elsewhere than it claimed to be. The Congo was not in the Congo but in the shiny streets of Brussels,” she argues¹. The interconnectedness of the world across many levels – from the ecological to the economic, the political and the social – has also become starkly visible during the recent pandemic.

¹ Horizons and Frontiers, Late Liberal Territoriality, and Toxic Habitats

Marseilles, with its particular geography, port infrastructure and crowded beaches, has long had difficulties with water pollution. Its coastline was recently named among the most plastic-polluted in the Mediterranean. Sources of contamination include the port, the excess of cruise ships transiting through the city’s waters, and the presence of heavy industry. There are oil refineries and petrochemical plants, particularly at the Étang de Berre, as well the Gardanne alumina production plant, which discards toxic red sludge into the sea within the boundaries of the Calanques National Park. The river of Marseilles, l’Huveaune, which flows through the park of the Ballet National de Marseille, has also been severely polluted in recent decades.

Podcast

On October 25, I discussed the exhibition and topics of pollution, circulation and toxicity in Marseilles with Geoffroy Mathieu, photographer presenting his series La mauvaise réputation, and Pierre Revel, from the association Rives & Culture presenting the project Collines en ville.

Related projects — Waters