Toxics

Material Form Function | ＿matter Festival 2025 | Temporality | Waste | More-Than-Human | Water | Wax | Toxics | Sand | Science Communication Paraffin pollution is a recurring concern in coastal environments, yet one that is inherently difficult to detect and classify. The exhibition »Latent Accumulations« at Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin traces the elusive activity of this material. It gives insights into site-specific research processes that connect material investigations with local experiences and memories of shifting landscapes. more

Material Form Function | Toxics | Waste | Wax | Temporality | More-Than-Human | Sand | Water The project »Latent Accumulations« examines paraffin, an elusive material, from its accumulations on the Baltic coast of the Curonian Spit in Lithuania to its pressing environmental and geopolitical concerns. This article presents the project by Léa Perraudin and Iva Rešetar in detail. more

Filtering | Waste | Toxics | Temporality Alwin Cubasch, Christian Kassung and Heike Weber from the Filtering project cordially invite you to a bicycle tour of contaminated sites in the Berlin area, organized and conducted by Jonas Stuck from the Rachel Carson Center in Munich and based on his research results. This bike tour on 22 September 204 explores three significant landfills used to dispose of Western waste in East Germany during the period of Germany’s division. We dive into the beginnings of the trade of waste between West and East Germany and its geo- and socio-political, environmental, and economic implications. We discuss different types of waste disposed of and their impact on the surrounding ecologies. Examples of historical records and waste management strategies will be shown alongside the contemporary efforts of managing these legacies. more

Filtering | Toxics | Waste | Temporality In March 2023, an interdisciplinary team from design, computer science, art, and cultural studies examined various concepts of dealing with radioactive waste and the historical environmental impact of the industrial site of Oranienburg. While exploring the history of radioactive legacies in Oranienburg, we were confronted with different types of information: traces of the former industrial sites and bombings, symbols, maps, or signs of cleaning and securing as well as memorials as part of today's culture of remembrance. Oranienburg, with its multi-layered historical legacies, but also the land activations that have taken place, thus offered a concrete environment for the workshop questions as a field of research and experimentation. The group now published detailed documentation of the workshop. more

Material Form Function | Waste | Toxics | Achievements Leila Wallisser has been awarded the First Prize of the German Design Graduate (GDG) Committee 2023 in the category »Sustainability and Circularity« for her Master’s Thesis »Toxic Legacies« conducted at weißensee school of art and design berlin, supervised by »Matters of Activity« members Prof. Dr.-Ing. Karola Dierichs and Prof. Dr. Lucy Norris. »Toxic Legacies« is an innovative design project that delves into the world of recycling, shedding light on how the concept of recycling can tend to justify the production of waste in a consumer-based system. more

Filtering | Material Form Function | Waste | Toxics On August 30th, 2023, Cluster Professor Robert Stock gave a talk about Australia's nuclear contamination from a critical disability studies' perspective. In his contribution at the Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographic Society, Robert focused on Yami Lester, a blind aboriginal activist engaged in social change and political intervention in the settler society of Australia. The RGS-IBG Annual International Conference was taking place in London at the Society and Imperial College London, and online from Wednesday 30 August to Friday 1 September 2023. more

Filtering | Waste | Toxics The three-day-workshop »Tracing tainted environments: Legacies of Oranienburg« from March 14th-16th, 2023, explores different approaches to the historical legacies of the industrial site of Oranienburg in the north of Berlin. In different settings we are questioning adequate tools by joining various disciplinary perspectives on dealing with data and environmental pollution: human-computer interaction, design, history, and cultural and political studies. The industrial site of Oranienburg with its multi-layered historical legacies will be taken as a field of research and experimentation, thus providing a concrete setting for the workshop questions. In experimental series, talks and excursions, the three-day workshop explores the different dimensions of information in the context of non-tangible traces and summarizes them in design concepts. more

Filtering | Toxics »Altlasten« (»contaminated sites«, literal translation »old burdens«) is a temporal term. At the time of their creation, they are not yet »old« and are usually not even perceived as a »burden«. But the perception changes. What is a contaminated site today was once a blind spot and may be a potential tomorrow. So dealing with contaminated sites, their possible dangers or potentials, is dealing with blind spots. That is what makes it so difficult to perceive them. Because we don't see that we don't see what we don't see.   more

Filtering | Toxics This »Talking Matters« contribution had a special feature: the talk by environmental historian Verena Winiwarter from Universität für Bodenkultur Wien was also the keynote of the »Filtering Legacies« workshop that »Matters of Activity« was co-hosting with Technische Universität Berlin on November 11th and 12th. Verena Winiwarter's talk focused on naturally occurring radioactive materials that are »technologically enhanced« (TENORMs) and play a role in numerous processes when people exploit natural resources, such as fracking. As long as the material was naturally occurring deep in the earth, it had little effect. But once concentrated and brought to the light of day it presents a borderline case. The talk aimed to use the borderline case of TENORMs as a lens through which to view the greater question of human interventions into natural systems and their consequences for society. more

Filtering | Toxics The project explores the history of the town of Oranienburg as a radioactive industrial landscape. At the turn of the 20th century, large chemical factories that supplied Berlin‘s gas light industry began to cluster in and around Oranienburg. Tons of monazite sands were accumulated and refined to extract radioactive thorium and the rare earth cerium, among other elements. The residual radioactivity in Oranienburg can be traced back to these industrial activities, and to the destruction of several production sites during a bombing raid in March 1945, near the end of World War II. »Filtering Oranienburg« addresses, first, in environmental historical terms, the power structures that shaped industrial materials' extraction, refining, and disposal. On the other hand, Oranienburg serves the project as an experimental site for exploring and developing approaches to collective futures in damaged landscapes, through which the understanding of filtering as a fundamental cultural technique is tested and further developed. more

Toxics | Temporality The artistic-scientific research project »Blasted Landscapes« deals with the complicated history and controversial use of former military training areas in Brandenburg. Based on the different interests in relation to these sites we want to investigate how different landscape concepts are created and what assumptions about nature and culture underlie them. more