Visualizing Toxic Subjects

Stephanie Narrow: Admitted at: Calexico, Calif.

I would be interested in seeing a collage that incorporates both sides of the ID card - or perhaps even included in the caption an overview of the type of information included on the biographical...Read more

Shannon Bae: Weaving the Past Forward

Due to the scope of the image, my eye first went to the broader expanse in the background. It wasn't until reading the explanation that I looked closely enough to see the transposed rods from the...Read more

Stephanie Narrow: A Toxic Family Tree

The detail in this image is overwhelming. I had to sit with it for several minutes as I reordered my lines of sight, making sense of the organization of the chart. As a historian (and thus with...Read more

Alice Chen: Hegemonic Heteronormativity

The juxtaposition of these two images are fantastic and really serve to evoke an emotional response from the viewer. However, the bottom image is quite wordy and really difficult to read. I wonder...Read more

Live soils: peasant stories of injustice and resistance by Maya Torres

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Chroma 1: Toxic soil due to indiscriminate use of agrotoxins in hard maize monoculture. Calvas, Ecuador by Maya Torres

Toxic agents scattered across our soils flow into water streams, air, food we consume, and the bodies of those who work the land. Global agricultural practices push farmers to forgo their soils’ long-term health in exchange for mass produced crops through the use of “modern” fertilizers and pesticides. As we now know, these chemicals often lead to serious diseases like cancer, disabilities and malformations. They also affect entire ecosystems resulting in pollinator decline and permanent soil erosion. In addition, they directly affect peasant families’ economies as expansion costs push them into ceaseless indebtedness and has even driven some of them to suicide.

The stories Maya presents here are part of a larger project that looks into farmers, particularly female farmers, and their ecological and restorative soil practices in southern Ecuador. These soils are seen as life-giving organisms and they are part of peri-urban agricultural practices to protect the land, its agrobiodiversity, its ecosystems, and the life of the people that inhabit and care for them. Furthermore, we argue that these are resistance practices to a predatory capitalist agri-food industry where women are at a particular disadvantage.

The stories revealed in these "living soils" are visualized through soil chromatography images of three different soils. This imaging technique have been collaboratively developed with the women who nurture and care for these lands in an attempt to open up a political discussion around our food choices. They graphically illustrate various stages of soil detoxification.

Chroma 2: Toxic soil due to agrotoxins in monoculture of hard maize. Pindal, Ecuador by Maya Torres

Toxic agents scattered across our soils flow into water streams, air, food we consume, and the bodies of those who work the land. Global agricultural practices push farmers to forgo their soils’ long-term health in exchange for mass produced crops through the use of “modern” fertilizers and pesticides. As we now know, these chemicals often lead to serious diseases like cancer, disabilities and malformations. They also affect entire ecosystems resulting in pollinator decline and permanent soil erosion. In addition, they directly affect peasant families’ economies as expansion costs push them into ceaseless indebtedness and has even driven some of them to suicide.

The stories Maya presents here are part of a larger project that looks into farmers, particularly female farmers, and their ecological and restorative soil practices in southern Ecuador. These soils are seen as life-giving organisms and they are part of peri-urban agricultural practices to protect the land, its agrobiodiversity, its ecosystems, and the life of the people that inhabit and care for them. Furthermore, we argue that these are resistance practices to a predatory capitalist agri-food industry where women are at a particular disadvantage.

The stories revealed in these "living soils" are visualized through soil chromatography images of three different soils. This imaging technique have been collaboratively developed with the women who nurture and care for these lands in an attempt to open up a political discussion around our food choices. They graphically illustrate various stages of soil detoxification.

Chroma 3: Live soil, use of ancestral and traditional techniques for fertilization, pasture cultivation. Nabón, Ecuador by Maya Torres

Toxic agents scattered across our soils flow into water streams, air, food we consume, and the bodies of those who work the land. Global agricultural practices push farmers to forgo their soils’ long-term health in exchange for mass produced crops through the use of “modern” fertilizers and pesticides. As we now know, these chemicals often lead to serious diseases like cancer, disabilities and malformations. They also affect entire ecosystems resulting in pollinator decline and permanent soil erosion. In addition, they directly affect peasant families’ economies as expansion costs push them into ceaseless indebtedness and has even driven some of them to suicide.

The stories Maya presents here are part of a larger project that looks into farmers, particularly female farmers, and their ecological and restorative soil practices in southern Ecuador. These soils are seen as life-giving organisms and they are part of peri-urban agricultural practices to protect the land, its agrobiodiversity, its ecosystems, and the life of the people that inhabit and care for them. Furthermore, we argue that these are resistance practices to a predatory capitalist agri-food industry where women are at a particular disadvantage.

The stories revealed in these "living soils" are visualized through soil chromatography images of three different soils. This imaging technique have been collaboratively developed with the women who nurture and care for these lands in an attempt to open up a political discussion around our food choices. They graphically illustrate various stages of soil detoxification.

 

Alice Chen: Cisgender Fragility

These two images show how certain bodies are marked toxic by heternormativity and then subsequently policed by those who are heternormative. This makes us question who is actually engage in toxic...Read more

Fred Ariel Hernandez: Toxic Public Welfare

 The image is made up of almost all plastic materials except the needle which is not visible. Additionally, all the syringes are empty. This it reminds me of modernity's false promise of...Read more

Politics of Hate in Southern California

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The Rise Above Movement Protesting

Caption: An image of members from the Rise Above Movement (RAM) protesting. They are promoting anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric.

This image comes from a screenshot of a YouTube video uploaded by the Rise Above Movement (RAM). RAM is based in Huntington Beach, California. They are a pro-Trump white nationalist group that practices hand-to-hand combat. They have made national news as of late for being involved in and convicted of hate crimes performed at the famous Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. They are thought to be one of the catalysts for the rise of hate crimes in California, particularly Orange County.

My project attempts to find what conditions make southern California a place for a group like this to not only rise but to thrive and grow in numbers. I chose this image as representative of the group's violent nature and as what the conditions southern California could present in the making of a political environment gone awry. In ethnographically assessing these conditions, it is hopeful one can better understand how to avoid such hate and most certainly keep it out of politics. 

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