COMPOSTING SLOW VIOLENCE
IN COLLABORATION W/ ENTRE MOLÉCULAS
IN COLLABORATION W/ ENTRE MOLÉCULAS
when disruptive contaminating factors in the molecular composting process such as chemicals, plastic composites, mineral salts, moulds, etc. take over the organic processes supposed to form humus - the decomposition and transformation processes slip out of balance
is compost an utopia of progress by the uncontaminated?
composting slow violence is a collective process of tracing stories of misguided decay, of spilling over of heat, of absent ghosts in the water, of pollutants waiting for repair. we intervene locally and remotely with carrier bags of sand and glass in the composting process that forms the translocal stories of neocolonial extractivism, dark ecologies and molecular slow violence.
different contributions on the fiction of mercurybodies, sand, alchemistic corals and murky glass beads forming techno-political conglomerates through language, sound, touch, heat, patience, silence and slow transformation.
how deep is deep?
how long is love?
how does a landscape 1000 years away from here respond to the slow violence processes of extractivism in the present?
it's sandbanks have dissolved, the crabs have hidden in caves. together with water, bacteria and algae, they turn rocks into soil. the sand has been "hijacked" on a large scale.
who cares about sand?
quartz sand, play sand, mining sand... sand is found in the cement of the dwellings, and in the respiratory tracts of the inhabitants. the rain washes it back into the river. sands are everywhere, and in zones of enormous heat - sand can melt into glass. environmental toxins diffuse into the sand, petrifying it into an island - no one dares move or touch it.
but how do you turn contamination into compost?
*about entre moleculas
for documenta fifteen (2022), jakarta-based collective and lead artistic directors ruangrupa initiated an international collaborative network for alternative knowledge production and sharing named the “composting knowledge” network (färgfabriken, gap tokyo, ica sofia, jj & donkey mill art center, knowbotiq with entre_moléculas, myvillages, ycar toronto). ruangrupa’s “composting knowledge” stands for an ongoing experiment to imagine alternative terrains for knowledge production and sharing, in collaboration with ruruhaus in kassel and a wide range of institutions, initiatives, practices, collectives and individuals.
entre moléculas
is a patchwork of artists, anthropologists, curators from bogotá, berlin, lisboa, quibdó, zurich who joined for collaborations on illegal mining, extractivism, slow violence and dark ecologies. we have built assemblages with mining materials, its affects and sounds: gold, water, plastic, mercury, sand and machine learning algorithms. we meet, share, resonate out of our divergent situtatedeness. non-representation fosters our ongoing research weaving links from trust, remoteness and proximity. possibilities of imaginative futures are weaving bridges and crisscross irrational extractivist practices. communities are not for sale —opposing and confronting such agency has also been the way to create a safe space for encounter and listening
Bambazú / Carmemanza Rojas Potes, Elizabeth Gallón Droste, Claudia Howald, knowbotiq, Ana Garzón Sabogal, Paula OG (Fundación Mareia), Pablo Torres Gómez