An Exploration in the Landscapes and Narratives of the Anthropocene

Laura Pietilä

Contaminated and Scarred: An Exploration in the Landscapes and Narratives of the Anthropocene

Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History

Abstract Pietilä, L. 2020. Contaminated and Scarred: An Exploration in the Landscapes and Narratives of the Anthropocene. Uppsala, Dept of Archaeology and Ancient History.

In this thesis, I explore and analyse narratives around toxic and scarred landscapes. The aim of the thesis is to understand human views and experiences of anthropogenic environments through narratives of contamination and toxicity. Some concepts used throughout the thesis are landscape, heritage, ghost, and trauma. The research is situated in the transdisciplinary field of environmental history and utilises multidisciplinary academic research, art works, and several different media outlets as sources of data. Many brief examples of toxic sites are given along the way to demon- strate discussed themes in practice, but two specific landscapes are explored in detail. These are Bikini Atoll in Marshall Islands, an island remaining radioactive to date due to Cold War era weapon testing, and the town of Teckomatorp in Sweden, a remediated site of a chemical industry scandal. Furthermore, an academic environmental justice project Toxic Bios (KTH, Stockholm) is analysed as a medium of narrative creation and several visual artists’ works are brought up alongside news articles and cinematography. This thesis is an exploratory journey and it aspires to contribute to bridging academic disciplines as well as encouraging expression of individual stories and subjective viewpoints in narrations of scarred landscapes. Findings of the thesis link to previous research on landscapes as experienced and temporal – toxic landscapes are narrated constantly through many perceptions, storylines, and branches of research. Some reoccurring themes are sickness, environmental justice, tensions between local and global levels of narration, fascinating but controversial depictions of toxicity’s aesthetics and individual experiences of dramatic pasts in non-dramatic present. Individual stories, counter-hegemonic narratives, and transdisciplinary practices are needed in order to create deeper understanding of living in the Anthropocene.

Keywords: Landscape, Contamination, Toxicity, Narrative, Environmental Justice, Ecology, Vis- uality, Bikini Atoll, Teckomatorp.

Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History (45 credits), supervisor: Anneli Ekblom, De- fended and approved spring term 2020-05-29 © Laura Pietilä Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Box 626, 75126 Uppsala, Sweden

Acknowledgments

Writing this thesis has taught me much more than how to explore narratives of toxic landscapes. It has been a project taking longer than I expected, but fortunately I have not gone through it alone. I want to express my sincere thanks to those who have helped me along the way. First, I want to thank my supervisor Anneli Ekblom for providing me with insightful comments, guidance, and encouragement not only during the writing of this thesis, but throughout these two years studying in the Global Environmental History master’s program. I have much appreciated the support and time you have put into this process. Secondly, I want to thank my colleagues and friends, especially Franklin and Eleanor, for being there and sharing this journey in Uppsala with me. I don’t think I could have done it without you. Finally, thank you to my family who always support me no matter what.

Contents

1. Introduction ...... 5 1.1. Finding the boundaries ...... 6 1.2. Pursuing narratives and landscapes of toxicity ...... 6 2. Landscape, Heritage, and Narratives ...... 8 2.1 Places and Landscapes ...... 8 2.2. Heritage ...... 9 2.3. Narrative ...... 11 2.4. Time and Trauma ...... 12 3. Defining toxic landscapes ...... 14 3.1. The instrumental definition and remediation ...... 14 3.2. Waste and Toxification of landscapes ...... 16 3.3. Ghosts and trauma ...... 18 3.4. Memory and loss ...... 20 3.5. The most Ironic Natural Areas ...... 21 4. The contradiction: The Bikini island ...... 24 4.1. Local and global memory ...... 24 4.2. Nuclear Kitsch ...... 26 4.3. Coral reefs and sunken warships ...... 27 4.4. A Fabulated Eden ...... 27 4.5. Visions of Anthropogenic futures ...... 29 5. The imagery of toxic landscapes: press, media, and art ...... 31 5.1. The narrative power of Images ...... 31 5.2. Toxic art ...... 33 5.3. Press on contamination ...... 35 5.4. Representation in film and documentary ...... 37 6. Living in a damaged landscape: Teckomatorp ...... 42 6.1. Historical background and contamination context ...... 42 6.2. Monica’s story ...... 43 6.2. After the Scandal ...... 44 6.3. A Scarred Landscape ...... 45 7. Remediation through narrative: The Toxic Bios project...... 48 7.1. Space for counter-hegemony ...... 48 7.2 Stories of agency ...... 50 7.3 A crossroads of toxic discussion ...... 52 8. The unknown destination ...... 54 References ...... 56

1. Introduction

This thesis started from a sudden moment of realisation, from seeing a pattern between several different cultural products and news pieces I had encountered within the past year. In November 2018, I visited an art gallery in Berlin featuring a photography exhibition on Bikini Atoll’s radioactive landscape and heritage of the past. Not so long after, I had a conversation with friends about a news article on recent issues concerning the placement of contaminated wastewater from cooling down the damaged nuclear reactor in Fukushima following the 2011 earthquake. With this experience and conversation in mind, I was watching the HBO television series Chernobyl, released in 2019, retelling the nuclear accident from 1986. (Japan Times 2019; Berlinische Galerie November 2018; Chernobyl 2019). All of these experiences provoked different feelings and thoughts in me - the museum visit sparked in me a sense of curiosity and intrigue, the conversation on radioactive wastewater made me feel uneasy, and the television series arose a feeling of impending doom as its near-apocalyptic imagery stuck in my mind for a long time after. Connecting the dots between these encounters and realising the constantly increasing amount of discussion on toxicity in different forms surfacing all around me, I became fascinated with toxic narratives. Toxicity is something scary and unknown, seemingly separated from us and nature, but living in the Anthropocene, the era defined by human induced large-scale transformations, toxicity has truly become an increasingly daunting reality (Lock 2019). Chemicals are subtly but centrally present in our daily lives, more waste is produced than ever before, and some fields of industry not only pollute the air but also create waste remaining hazardous for centuries to come. Toxicity can no longer be assigned to certain sectors of life as it is transboundary, generously impacting that which is public, personal, human, non-human, economic, and ecological. Thus, it is only logical that toxicity is being discussed in different forms and forums, but what does this ominous pervasion mean for us as individuals? Through collecting and exploring these different forms of toxic representation, my aim in this thesis is to gain a better understanding of what it means to be living in a toxic world. Toxicity is long-lasting and often has unpredictable effects, thus creating a strong connection between the past of a landscape and the present moment. I see this constantly lingering weight of the past in the present as a type of trauma - a disruption, an unwanted and sometimes unknown change having a long-lasting effect on not only the human world but also a world existing independent of us. However, these two worlds are not separate entities, and the complex relationship between human and ecological trauma was something I felt was worth exploring as well. This thesis prob- lematises toxic landscapes and it takes the form of an exploratory research. Diverging perhaps from a more conventional thesis structure, this exploration has its focus on gathering and analysing existing multidimensional narratives around landscapes of contamination. This includes, among others, uncovering the heritage of toxicity, the complex and sometimes contradictory relationship between belonging and hazard, dramatic pasts and serene present, memories, and stories as well as aesthetics and toxicity. As stated, conceptualisations of toxicity exist in many forms, and I am also here discussing visuality, and its role in representations and interpretations of the world as toxic, as a medium of attempting to create an understanding and contributing to voicing narratives in new forms.

1.1. Finding the boundaries Toxics and damaged landscapes are all around us. European Environment Agency estimates there to be approximately 2.5 million contaminated sites in Europe alone (EEA 2014). Our era, as implied by the term Anthropocene, has given a new definition of danger and changed landscapes in such drastic ways that, in worst cases, the repercussions may still be present in ten thousand years’ time. Anthropocene as a term was introduced to represent the scale and importance of human activity on modifying the environment on a planetary scale, seeing as humanity’s presence on the Earth has become comparable to some of the nature’s great forces (Steffen et al. 2011). Even though the term is still an informal one, not recognised officially by all Earth scientists and its definition and timing are continuously debated, I view it as a suitable frame for discussing toxicity and its long-lasting impacts on environments globally (Santana 2019). Similarly to Tsing et al. (2019) who approach Anthropocene with “critical and curious engagement” I am using the concept in a way which allows noticing modern landscapes and exploring them through a transdisciplinary lens. Researching different narratives on toxic landscapes is important as it helps us understand how we make sense of difficult and emotionally straining phenomena in our surroundings. Feelings such as loss, guilt, anger, injustice, wonder, and surprise can be navigated through different mediums and looking into them tells us about the complexity of human relationship with the environment. Studying toxic environments is a wide field, as I will be reviewing in Chapters 2 and 3, and for this reason I have made certain selections in the constitution of this thesis. The cases I discuss are not necessarily bound together in time and space, but in each section there is a theme, which represents an angle to perceiving and narrating toxicity. In the fourth chapter, I will introduce the first case study of the thesis, which explores narratives of the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. From this case study, I will move on to Chapter 5, where I discuss the ways in which media and art construct narratives on contamination. News articles, films, documentaries, and photography are explored as ways of representation and this is complemented by a few brief analyses of works discussing contamination in some form. In Chapter 6, the theme of living in a contaminated, remediated landscape is explored through the case of Teckomatorp in Southern Sweden, and the final case study, in Chapter 7, introduces a project called Toxic Bios run by KTH Environ- mental Humanities Laboratory in Stockholm, Sweden. In this final chapter, I will consider the importance of broadening the narrative horizon through diffusing stories of individuals dealing with toxicity while also engaging in the topic of environmental justice. To wrap up the exploration in the world of toxic narratives, a final discussion will serve as a reflection on the findings of the journey and on the significance of narrative representation.

1.2. Pursuing narratives and landscapes of toxicity The sombre reality of toxicity and its invasiveness is having an impact on all aspects of a landscape. In this thesis I decided to pursue an approach which aims to understand conceptualisations of toxicity in contexts of academia, media, and art, as briefly explained above. Environmental humanities place importance on understanding human views of living on the Earth by examining, for instance, the concepts and epistemologies which contribute to them. Bergthaller et al. (2014, 265) call this slow scholarship, a mode of thought, which helps us deal with “the mind-bending ambiguities forced upon us” when engaging in anthropogenic phenomena. It is concerned with critical analysis and long-term experimentation while attempting to find better ways of living on the planet (Bergthaller et al. 2014). Study of narratives, how they are formed and interpreted can be considered a part of said slow scholarship. Here, I am using an approach which centres around gaining understanding of the many modes of representation and narrative creation when concerning toxic environments, thus engaging in a discovery of perceptions - exploring both larger entities and small-scale representations.

I will begin this thesis with a background focusing on some central concepts such as place, heritage, time, and trauma. These concepts will be given more context in the third chapter, as I will go in-depth specifically on contaminated landscapes, and discuss approaches existing in academia within the research field of toxicity. This discussion includes a review of some official definitions of contaminated sites and then broadens to acknowledge the widespread issue of pollution and toxicity in the modern world. Research focusing on the heritage of toxicity, the concept of dark heritage, and an increasing interest towards places with tragic pasts have surfaced in recent decades, also providing a point of discussion in narrating contaminated landscapes. Questions of ethicality and dominating narratives will also be discussed as they become relevant, for instance, when economic interests are brought to these sites. This can happen through dark tourism busi- nesses or other type of entertainment based on the landscape’s toxic past, which for many is still bound with tragedy. This will be given some further attention in Chapter 4 when discussing the case of Bikini Atoll. In addition, the concept of landscape ghosts is brought up, and this will be a resurfacing concept throughout the thesis as it suits well analysis of many toxic landscapes giving insights into toxicity’s perseverance through hints of the past still manifesting in the present (Tsing et al. 2017). These different themes and concepts will function as bridges to understanding ways of looking and analysing a toxic or scarred landscape as I move on to discuss some specific sites and forms of toxic representation.

With the case of Bikini Atoll (Chapter 4), I will primarily discuss the many contradictions present in a landscape of contamination and how they come to be voiced in narrative form. For instance, a narrative tension between colonial violence and fascinating imaginaries of an anthropogenic landscape is a theme, which I will develop further. Also tensions between globality and locality will be analysed alongside themes of memory and loss. Later on when discussing the case of Teckomatorp (Chapter 6), this will be looked from another perspective, from one of a more ‘mundane’ toxic transformation and how locality plays out in a different way when a landscape is not globally known. So called ‘everyday landscapes’ with a dark past and their narratives are thus pursued through a specific site in Chapter 6 and in a broader sense in Chapter 7. With the Toxic Bios project, I will also delve into the concept of environmental justice. Here we get a glimpse into the everyday realities and first-hand experiences of toxicity in normal and ‘undramatic’ circumstances. These are important to explore as there is a need to hear varying voices in order to gain deeper understanding of larger entities, such as the toxic world, which are impossible to pin down in any one all-inclusive way. Contrasting to these two cases, Chapter 5 will bring in more dramatized and intentionally crafted narratives of contamination. Media has power, which cannot be overlooked when considering narratives. It is important to critically evaluate the cultural products we face on television, on news sources as well as on social media. Imagery constitutes a great part of communication in media these days and that is why the theme is given some closer attention. Additionally, the often intangible or invisible quality of toxicity presents a challenge which has inspired artists to create more interpretative visualisations of it. All these themes of environmental justice, individual experience, global scale, objectivity, subjectivity, mysticism, and realism are explored more in-depth in specific chapters, but they are simultaneously overlapping and create connections between the different explored cases. This is fitting as it once again reminds of the transboundary nature of toxicity as well as the anthropogenic frame of reference filled with ambiguities.

2. Landscape, Heritage, and Narratives

“There is a tendency to think of narrative primarily as a temporal art and landscape as something visual, spatial, an unchanging background and therefore non-narrative. However, as Ricoeur states, narratives combine two dimensions, one a temporal sequence of events and the other a nonchrono- logical configuration that organizes narrative into spatial patterns. Stories can plot events into lines, create hierarchies, unite beginnings and ends to form circles, or tie knots and design labyrinths. Like- wise, through landscape the temporal dimension of narrative becomes visible, and ‘space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history’ (Bakhtin, 84). Landscape narratives mediate this crossing of temporal and spatial experience” (Potteiger & Purinton 1998, 7). To ground and initiate this journey of exploration, in this first chapter I will delve into some key theoretical concepts. Notions of place, narrative, heritage, and trauma are briefly introduced, and these will serve as tools for later exploration of representing toxicity through specific cases. Nar- ratives and gathering understanding of their multiplicity when concerning toxic landscapes are at the core of this thesis. However, narratives are tricky and, at times, elusive - especially narratives of places. The inherently present temporal dimension of places makes it inevitable that a place changes and continuously takes new forms and meanings. The above citation by Potteiger & Pu- rinton (1998) shines light on the many layers and connections between landscapes and narratives. Description of places is an important part of creating understanding of the world we live in and looking into different descriptions, or narratives, allows us to inspect the many ways in which humans create meaning through their relationship with their surroundings. Situating ourselves here at the start of the exploration by becoming familiarised with these concepts will help us navigate the elusiveness of narratives and give a framework for the analysis of the case studies in later chapters.

2.1 Places and Landscapes Places are filled with meanings and they carry ecological, social, and political characteristics. We live our lives in places and in some cases, a certain place can become nearly indistinguishable from a person’s identity. Many disciplines have studied places and there are numerous ways in which they have been conceptually defined. One argument is that a mere space becomes a place when it becomes somehow culturally significant (Keating 2015). Additionally, according to Annika Schlitte (2017) places are subjective, differing and create bodily experiences of here and there – places situate us, we perceive ourselves, others, and places in relation to one another. Any study of a landscape or a place draws on many experiences and as such, it is a fundamentally interdisciplinary endeavour. A quotation by Barbara Bender (2002, 106) that I find insightful explains this well: “[l]andscapes refuse to be disciplined; they make a mockery of the oppositions that we create between time (history) and space (geography) or between nature (science) and culture (anthropology)”. The distinctions and division into different disciplines are indeed artificial and do not reflect the way humans experience their surroundings daily. This becomes particularly visible in an interesting example, given by Bender (2002), of an interview with a farmer discussing her land. The farmer manages to weave in, in one sentence, all these aforementioned aspects of knowing a land and phenomena linked to it, which in scientific terms would be divided into disciplines and rarely discussed in the same sentence. However, this type of conceptualisation comes naturally to the person who experiences the different components of the landscape as parts of one familiar

8 entity. The example brings to life the essence of landscapes as experienced and physical (cf. Ingold 1992) while they are also represented and narrated. According to Tuan (1977) knowing a place through lived experience, as seen in the example above, roots a person and allows for a narrative. This in turn, helps transform a location into a place with meaning. Tuan (1977) has introduced a phenomenological approach to the study of ‘sense of a place’. Engaging with a landscape and gathering knowledge of it through action and individual experience, in combination with its representations and narratives, is drastically different than cat- egorising landscapes and breaking them down to pieces. As should be apparent, any landscape is already complex and manifold in its qualities and identities. However, living in a toxic place or identifying oneself with a landscape which is harmful, brings in new complexities to the relationship between a person and a place. A landscape which has been subject to contamination and potentially long-lasting toxicity, has many new dimensions of meaning incorporated to its core identity. An example of this type of a landscape will be taken a closer look into in Chapter 6, where I will bring up a case study of a Swedish town, Teckomatorp, and how living in a landscape nationally defined largely by its past toxic scandal plays out in both the identity of the local people and in the identity of the landscape. The mentioning of a landscape’s identity may perhaps sound far-fetched, but with identity here I am referring to a combination of its countless characteristics, visible and invisible as well as the human identities, which are involved in being moulded by the place and simultaneously moulding the place itself. Thus, what I am after is a way of seeing and representing these landscapes as unfolding and experienced in their many forms.

2.2. Heritage Moving on from the concept of place to the concept of heritage, I must bring forth some contradictions, which are inevitable between landscapes of abandonment, ruin or contamination and heritage as seen from a traditional point of view. Heritage implies a strong anthropocentric viewpoint, as it designates places and objects loaded with meaning and representing some type of cultural importance to humans. Pétursdóttir (2013) engages in a conversation on the current debate of heritage’s intrinsic intangibility. Historically, heritage has been seen as tangible objects of value that need conservation from deteriorating as their visual presence (often already in ruins) and monu- mentality has some inherent significance (idem.). However, lately the intangibility of heritage has been argued through the representative nature of these tangible objects. The objects (or landscapes) in themselves have no value as heritage, but the social and cultural values engaged in them are the ones worth preserving (Pétrusdóttir 2013). This discussion becomes interesting as we try to understand what makes a place valuable and worth preserving. For instance, what kind of social value can be associated with landscapes of contamination or abandonment when they often represent some type of human error, accident, or tragedy? If heritage is seen as something worth preserving, then it usually is assumed to represent something admirable, beautiful, or generally positive. In connection with this topic, I think Pétursdóttir (2013) offers some valuable insights. Fact is that many tangible and intangible representatives of the past will be passed on to the future generations despite humans managing or not managing them (Pétursdóttir 2013). As she puts it, “there is sur- vival also of the unwanted, outmoded or discarded” (idem., 37). There is heritage also in the simultaneously tangible and intangible toxicity caused by air, land or water pollution, or the persistent presence of radioactivity in places of contamination whether it is thought of as heritage or not. A landscape’s heritage value is difficult to define (Lowenthal 1993). Often it is considered to be tied, for example, to aesthetic qualities, impressive exhibitions of human land modifications, or unique ecosystems. Land is, as most things in the world these days, given economic value in num- bers through processes of selling and buying. Beautiful ‘romanticised ruins’ lift the value of a landscape, but toxic landscapes, as most modern-day ruins, do not fall into this category of aesthetics. As there are narratives tied to places, there are certain ‘preferred perceptions’ of landscapes

9 to which oftentimes toxic landscapes or industrial ruins do not fit (Pétursdóttir 2013)1. Hardesty (2001) has a different take on the aesthetic value of a landscape. His argument uses ‘history’ instead of ‘heritage’ as the focal point of the landscape. In essence he is exploring a landscape’s past and showcasing it regardless whether it is considered aesthetically pleasing or not, claiming that “no one said history has to be pretty” (Hardesty 2001, 24). Abandoned contaminated landscapes most likely do not impact directly people’s lives in the present as there is not much physical contact with the landscape, but they have an indirect impact by having separated people from the place, and this is also a type of heritage. The past social and environmental processes have shaped the present in such a manner, which prevents people from residing in that landscape and affects its land use. Contaminated landscapes where people still reside also contain heritage values, including what is referred to as ‘bad heritage’. The concept of ‘bad heritage’ as discussed by Pétrusdóttir (2013) may seem like an oxymoron from the point of view of official definitions of heritage, but I would argue there to be such a thing. For instance, landscapes that have faced devastating effects such as destruction or contamination, as a result of misconduct, accident, or other tragedy, carry a heritage of dark history in need of acknowledgment. In some places and cases, waste left behind by previous generations does become the most impactful and long-lasting heritage. This theme will be central also to the upcoming discussion in the case study of Bikini atoll (Chapter 4) and its nomination for the UNESCO world heritage list. Hardesty (2001) discusses the heritage of toxic waste and presents a few cases in which old industrial landscapes, which still carry toxic waste have become tourist attractions showcasing the early times of industrialisation and the infrastructure it came with. As an example, in Eureka, Nevada United States, a silver-smelting centre from the late 19th century was planned to be turned into a tourist attraction, spreading the history of this early industrial landscape in which toxic waste is part of a nationally celebrated history. In this case the toxic waste was harnessed into a symbol bringing the past closer to people (Hardesty 2001). Hardesty (2001) calls this toxicity itself a heritage. However, many would disagree with the use of the term here. The way I see it, the word ‘heritage’ in Hardesty’s (2001) use is wildly different from the definitions of the likes of UNESCO, where heritage equals cultural value and any other significant places are considered mere ‘historical sites’. Regardless, the toxic heritage Hardesty discusses represents a past still existing in the present, reminding of what has been and what has been passed on. Similarly, Krupar (2012) calls the long living implications of toxicity a ‘legacy’ when discussing discarded nuclear waste. The value in bad heritage is linked to remembering and understanding the context from which it stemmed and the context which it provided for later generations. In recent times, memories of toxicity, historical events leading to contamination, and sites still scarred have become something people actively seek out and want to gain more knowledge about. For instance, Hryhorczuk (2014) discusses Chernobyl’s dark heritage value and the linked phenomenon of dark tourism, a term first introduced by Lennon and Foley (1996). These unorthodox tourism sites have a past often involving death and suffering (Hryhoczuk 2014). Historical sites of human suffering and tragedy, such as Auschwitz, are perhaps what comes first to mind. However, since the partial opening of the borders to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in 2011, several tourism companies have started operating in the area and taking tourists around the contaminated site gaining surprising popularity (Hryhorczuk 2014). As this thesis moves forward and I will come to discuss the case studies more closely, it will become clear that a certain level of dark heritage is always present at contaminated landscapes and a persistent intrigue towards them exists among the general public. These contaminated landscapes are seen as still haunted by past events and they are perceived as some kind of unnatural nature, a perplexing entity breaking the boundaries of what we have been taught about nature.

1 An important point of discussion is also the difference between the ‘museum type heritage’, which offers visitors “a disciplined and purified space” and the type, which is experienced on a daily basis and truly impacts lives in the present (Pétursdóttir 2013). I see landscapes as heritage belonging to the latter category. 10

2.3. Narrative As I stated in the beginning of this chapter, narratives are key to this thesis and my medium for understanding human relationships with toxic environments. Narratives could be described as stories, but with a more open and diverse set of data, form and presentation. As Potteiger & Purinton (1998, 3) put it, “while every story is a narrative, not every narrative necessarily meets the conventional notions of a story as a well-wrought tale plotted with a clear sense of beginning, middle, and end (Prince, 91)”. They can be explanatory of events and history, but also more generally of the world around us (Cebik 1986). Thus, the world can be studied through narratives, which exist in many forms and evolve with changing times. Potteiger & Purinton (1993) see narrating as a “vital activity”, happening in forms such as oral storytelling, text, and video. Narratives may be widely recognised and have authority, or they may be mundane and open-ended (idem.). Once having been looked down upon in academia, narratives are now an essential part of any discipline as epistemological and historical consciousness in research require acknowledgement of narrative creation. Places are constantly narrated and there are widespread specific ideas of well-known cities and regions, for example of Rome or Dubai. The imaginations and connotations that come to mind when a place name is mentioned are based on dominating narratives, which simplify a place to highlight some of its qualities seen as particularly prominent and descriptive of the place. Clearly the connotations vary between individuals and quite often locals think of other characteristics than people with no connection to the place2. Many types of narratives co-exist, thus locally known myths, or more widely known tales and legends are valuable parts of narratives belonging to a place, even if they are only part of a certain group’s cultural knowledge and not widely acknowl- edged. Foote (2003) argues that these smaller-scale narratives and word of mouth stories gain stronger foothold when (potentially dark) parts of the past are not allowed to be openly discussed. The attempt from official side may sometimes be to erase a bad legacy, but it still lingers on strongly in people’s memories and imaginations. As was discussed earlier in relation to places, Schlitte (2017, 44) states that “a place serves to root stories and events in the world of experience”. With this quote Schlitte mainly refers to established historical narratives, but the same applies to more informal forms of narrating history, such as storytelling. A place is continuously recreated and given new meanings through its existing narratives. Experiencing a place is subjective and so is narrating it - even if only a few narratives usually become widely shared. Most of us are able to narrate our hometowns in some way, either through a widely existing and persistent local history or through our own experiences and life stories situated in that place. Sto- ries and anecdotes are very personal and still simultaneously interwoven with larger social and political context (Cameron 2012). They embody an interesting combination of individual and collective, sometimes also of local and global. Hannah Arendt (1958) discusses storytelling as “subjectivity in-between” which combines both personal and public interests, oscillating between different realms. As I consider this to be an important point in exploring narratives and trying to create understanding of them, I will bring up a case study later on (see Chapter 7), which delves into this theme. KTH’s Toxic Bios project aims to retell toxicity through personal accounts and individual experiences as these forms of representation give important insights when contextual- ised. In addition, acknowledging that there is value in the small-scale world of experience is important in order to build a deeper understanding of narratives of toxicity. Stories can align, rein- force, or contest dominant narratives and do not necessarily have a straightforward relationship to

2 This kind of initial ideas might be tied to historical events, emblematic landmarks, or recent news concerning the region. Stories in combination with personal experience create a different take on a place narrative than solely relying on second-hand knowledge. As has been mentioned already, there are multiple varying narratives for any given place depending on who is choosing the perspective and whose experience is listened to. However, when discussing dominant well-known narratives, Lyotard’s (1984) concept of grand narratives in his book The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge is interesting to take a closer look at. Places come to be defined by retelling of myths such as stories of wars and or catastrophes. 11 them. However, paying attention to the ways in which expression and experience link with structural and societal phenomena reminds us that stories are always born and told within a cultural, social, and ideological context (Cameron 2012).

2.4. Time and Trauma As I continue to create a foundation for exploring toxic representation, I want to bring up one more aspect relevant to the perception and narration of places – time. All landscapes are engaged in temporality, but the way I see it, landscapes with dark pasts and toxic heritage have a more obvious link with time than most places. Time is needed in order for a landscape to ‘recover’ from contamination and, for example, radioactivity needs time to decrease and become harmless. Tracking time and being aware of the impact of passing time is thus central in engaging with such a landscape. However, time, especially the past and the future, is something that intrigues and occupies the human mind also in more mundane contexts. Landscapes are formed of endless past events, some of which are more prominent in the present than others. Tsing et al. (2017) write of landscapes as haunted, intertwined with past cultural and ecological processes. This “spookiness of the past in the present” is a revealing way to word it, as the landscapes we know constitute of unknown, haunting, and often intangible pasts (Tsing et al. 2017, 3). These factors are described by Tsing et al. (2017) with the concept of ghosts that remind of the past (idem.). I see the concept of ghost as another way to describe what is called landscape memory (although in a more physicality- oriented way) by Mares et al. (2013), the mingling of past and present lifeforms, disappeared and long-lasting elements and changes3. The metaphor of ghosts works especially well for contaminated landscapes as toxicity and pollution may be subtly present in a landscape long after it has been ‘dealt with’ or alternatively some impact of the contamination may have shaped the physicality of the landscape in a way which is still detectable long after. I will return to this concept of ghosts in the next chapter and provide some examples to examine its use in specific cases. In connection with time and toxicity, the concept of trauma is relevant to discuss. Contamination is a traumatic event for the environment, its ecology, and certainly for the people living and dealing with it. Thus, Foote’s (2003, 4) discussion on the problematics of how to interpret a tragic event or time in history becomes relevant. More specifically he discusses in what kind of light the tragedies are brought to shared narratives. They may be presented as shameful, as valid and thus acknowledgeable parts of history or perhaps as turning points in history. In the context of contaminated landscapes, it is important to consider whether the landscape still holds a degree of toxicity or not. This is because something that is still affecting and harming humans or other lifeforms in the landscape, simply cannot be ignored. In reality, this may not always be the case as many a toxic site is overlooked or even attempted to be concealed. However, cases in which a successful and satisfactory remediation process has been executed or once enough time has passed since the contamination incident, things are different. It is in this moment it becomes of interest to see how the negative past is brought to light and retold. The problem has been taken care of and there is no direct responsibility to disclose information on it, but what is the responsibility towards a dark history? How does the time that separates us from it make us see it differently? The trauma of a dark past takes on new forms as time goes by. The real and experienced trauma of a few generations ago has a new shape in the generations after. In this chapter, I have discussed some central

3 Time has been a preoccupation of humans for centuries, as the way we know history, time has been segmented to different periods according to their events and significance. Bender (2002) calls this type of conceptualisation of passing time “event-driven” or based on “mythical or historical accounts”. A narrative of any kind does not treat time equally, instead it chooses the moments which are interesting in terms of someone’s interests. It also elides, denies, and exaggerates time in memory (idem.). This applies to human lives as well, we follow calendars in our daily lives and celebrate the start of a new year periodically, but looking back we recognise patterns and periods independent of those time structures, rarely conceptualising our lives through the defines of predetermined temporal measures.

12 notions for this thesis and the upcoming exploration. Place, heritage - especially in the context of tragedies, narratives, time, and trauma. These concepts will work as a framework to which the upcoming discussion and case studies lean on. In the next chapter, we will familiarise ourselves better with discussion on contamination and toxicity in academia.

3. Defining toxic landscapes

Toxic landscapes affect many parts of life, ranging from health issues to environmental degradation and industrial practices. This means the angles and approaches to researching toxicity are also diverging and multidisciplinary. In this chapter, I will discuss some conceptualisations and examples of contaminated landscapes from academia. To lay a foundation at the beginning, I will first present an overview of official definitions of contamination from governmental level before moving on to discuss research on remediation, issues relating to waste production, and introduce the concept of environmental violence. In the second half of the chapter, I will broaden the definition of contamination through discussion on ghosts, memories, and ecologies of toxic landscapes. These themes are further exemplified by presenting cases from around the world in order to give a better idea of situated toxicities. Academia is an institution with great power in affecting narratives. Although research may not always reach wide audiences, it has a status and authority which allow its narratives to gain otherwise strong foothold. The aim of this chapter is therefore to explore different approaches and topics within toxicity that are given attention. I also want to reflect on currents of research which voice ideas about toxicity, but which are not as widely discussed elsewhere. The very purpose of research is to gain understanding and as I have a similar goal here, I will attempt to understand better in what ways academia makes sense of toxicity.

3.1. The instrumental definition and remediation Inspecting definitions of what constitutes a contaminated landscape from an official point of view helps us understand public narratives of contamination. The way contamination is seen and re- sponded to from governmental level is an important factor in treatment of toxic sites. However, perspective on most pressing problems and dangers within contamination sites, the remediation processes that are in use, and the level of contamination, which is seen as a threshold for taking action changes from country to country. Disclosing information to the public makes up a part of a more general legitimised discourse. In what follows, I discuss information from governmental websites of the European Commission4, the United Kingdom, the United States and Sweden5 for an understanding of how contaminated land is described in official terms.

4 “Soil contamination is the occurrence of pollutants in soil above a certain level causing a deterioration or loss of one or more soil functions. Also, Soil Contamination can be considered as the presence of man- made chemicals or other alteration in the natural soil environment. This type of contamination typically arises from the rupture of underground storage tanks, application of pesticides, percolation of contaminated surface water to subsurface strata, leaching of wastes from landfills or direct discharge of industrial wastes to the soil. The most common chemicals involved are petroleum hydrocarbons, solvents, pesticides, lead and other heavy metals. The occurrence of this phenomenon is correlated with the degree of industrialization and intensity of chemical usage.” (European Commission 2020)

5“Contaminated areas are often related to industrial sites contaminated by inadequate management of chemicals and/or waste or from inadequate or non-existent treatment of waste water. Contamination has been caused by both public enterprises and private companies. In many cases, contamination is caused by substances, operations or waste disposal methods that are not in accordance with current environmental

On United Kingdom’s governmental website, contaminated sites are defined as lands which could cause “significant harm to people, property or protected species”. In addition, pollution of waters or radioactivity levels high enough to cause harm to humans are mentioned as key to defining contamination (Gov.uk 2020). Some mentioned uses of a site that may lead to contamination are different types of factories, mines, steel mills, refineries, and landfills. Meanwhile, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA): “Land contamination can result from a variety of intended, accidental, or naturally occurring activities and events such as manufacturing, mineral extraction, abandonment of mines, national defense activities, waste disposal, accidental spills, illegal dumping, leaking underground storage tanks, hurricanes, floods, pesticide use, and fertilizer application.” The website describes contaminated lands as “Sites contaminated by improper handling or disposal of toxic and hazardous materials and wastes. Sites where toxic materials may have been deposited as a result of natural disasters or acts of terror. Sites where improper handling or accidents resulted in release of toxic or hazardous materials that are not wastes” (USEPA 2020). As seen in the citations from the websites, multiple varying causes of contamination are identified. There is a significant amount of similarities in the descriptions, indicating that the general understanding of a contaminated site is somewhat shared regarding their instrumental definition. Some general descriptions of actions leading to contamination are improper handling or accidental spill of varying harmful toxics and contamination is generally defined as actions rendering the landscape to a degree harmful to humans and animals. Interestingly, the UK definition includes only harm to people and “protected species”, thus excluding harm to other life forms and ecosystems more generally. Industrialisation, chemicals, and other phenomena linked to human action are em- phasised, but for example the USEPA website recognises also “naturally occurring phenomena” as one factor of contamination, floods and hurricanes later mentioned as potential contributors. Some other common factors mentioned are pesticides, underground storage tanks, and conscious violations of regulation from the part of “public enterprises and private companies” (SWEPA 2019). Through multiple examples in later chapters we will indeed notice that the above-mentioned causes resurface in many of the discussed cases. Environmental legislation is also mentioned on many of the websites as it plays a key role in the definition of what constitutes a violation or a misconduct. In some cases, as we will see later regarding Teckomatorp (Chapter 6), a specific incident may have catalysed development of insufficient regional environmental legislation and brought forth concepts such as ‘environmental crime’ (Mårald 2001). In most cases, officials also require remediation or recovery processes when land has been contaminated and there are strict guidelines to follow regarding the execution. However, not only contaminated sites are subject to remediation processes, but in most cases when discussing remediation, it is about more ‘mundane’ transformations of a landscape. There is an entire industry specialised in clearing up and rehabilitating polluted or else ‘degraded’ areas. Often, contaminated places can be turned into something suitable according to the remaining level of pollution. Many kinds of industrial activities, such as mining, are major factors contributing to a landscape’s extreme changes, but they are, quite understandably, often thought of as less dramatic than cases of unintended contamination and degradation. But what does it really mean for a landscape to be remediated or to recover? In many cases, there is no return to the way the landscape was before the contamination or other transformation despite efforts of getting rid of toxics and other harmful elements in the soil or water. There can be an idea of ‘making better’, improving the current state of a landscape - be it in terms of aesthetics, biodiversity or getting rid of pollutants. Thus, research

legislation”. And “Contamination can result in the dispersal of hazardous substances in soils, sediment, ground water and surface water. At some sites, the contamination may represent a risk to human health, cause irreversible environmental damage or make the land unsuitable for some types of land use.” (SWEPA 2019). 15 on remediation and clean-up processes create their own discourse and narrative on the nature of polluted landscapes and of what a landscape ‘should’ in an ideal case be or strive towards. It is also of interest to inspect what it is that is seen as ‘needing remediation’ and the main purpose of the process. Without belittling the importance of clean-up projects, I want to bring attention to the discourse behind remediation and how it is seen to help the landscape. This I believe will reveal ideas and conceptualisations of landscapes so embedded in the process that they become nearly invisible, but still strongly affect the way the landscape is approached. As a final point on remediation, Beckett & Keeling (2018, 221) talk of the “complex temporalities of degradation, contamination and recovery”, referring to the long-lasting consequences and steps of the remediation process. Even if some aspects can be tended to and cleaned up, there are other factors, which will go on and simply cannot be managed. Such as memories, some types of contaminants, trauma for the soil and for the public can persist for a long time. I will further engage in this topic later in the chapter, when discussing ghosts and trauma. With this brief glimpse into official definitions of contamination and discussion on remediation, I have wanted to show some of the factors and characteristics that are publicly recognised as being connected to contamination as these have authority in wide-spread perceptions of what contamination is and consists of. As we have seen, an official definition serves to give a framework for recognising contamination and guide the public in understanding some of their implications. Nonetheless, the descriptions remain high-level and impersonal, not contributing much to deeper understanding of the multi-layered consequences of toxic environments. In the next section, we will delve deeper into academic research to understand some of those layers omitted in governmental descriptions.

3.2. Waste and Toxification of landscapes As we saw above with the examples of instrumental definitions, industrialisation has been a major contributor to the increasing toxification of the environment and many landscapes have been greatly impacted by industrial practices. Walker (2009, 8) calls these industrial spaces hybrid landscapes. They are sites which have been engineered, agriculturally and industrially, and represent a strong presence of human influence, impoverished ecosystems, and sometimes are toxic. However, another linked anthropogenic issue, a result of industrialisation, is waste production. Waste management is a relatively new phenomenon as it emerged in a larger scale only after 1950s and remains a problem in many countries. Some of the waste we produce is toxic and thus goes beyond aesthetic nuisance by having long-lasting effects on the environment and human health. However, the consequences of toxic waste are difficult to track, animals ingest toxics and contaminants may leak out into water and air over long periods of time, transferring and spreading in many ways. It seems that one of the main characteristics of modernity is an exponentially growing amount of waste. Marco Armiero (2019) has called our current era the Wasteocene, which is a term attempting to capture the “socio-economic system increasingly defined by its production of useless material”. As waste is often directly conceptualised as pollution, or at least it may lead to pollution when improperly handled, it is crucial to discuss the relationships humans have with waste when looking into issues of contamination and pollution in the Anthropocene. Shiloh Krupar (2012, 305) continues along the lines of Armiero’s idea of wasteocene, claiming that “the production and disposal of waste is central to modernity”.6 There is an important spatial

6 Industrialisation has led to not only massive increase in waste, but also created a more defined process of ‘becoming waste’, linking to recognition of value in things. Therefore, things associated with usefulness, productivity, and efficiency represent value and by contrast make those that are not - waste. Additionally, the process of disposal turns mere objects into waste (idem.). One moment an object may be of certain value and the next it is superfluous, useless, and unwanted. This change can happen in a matter of seconds when something is thrown into a bin, through a system based on symbolism. Through this symbolic process, the object loses its belonging to a place and no longer fits into our compartmentalised lives. 16 dimension to waste in our world as there are, for example, bins for household waste, waste management sites, and dumping grounds or landfills for items considered completely undesirable and useless. There has been a lot of work based on waste being “matter out of place” as first suggested by Mary Douglas (1966) who sees waste as a process of social construction. According to Krupar (2012) waste has been separated from nature, because it is seen as something artificial and unwanted. As there is no ‘authentic’ place for waste, places must be designated and created for it. Sometimes even very remote places of wilderness have been used as dumping grounds for waste, and one example is the Rocky Flats, which is discussed by Krupar (2012). This wilderness landscape was badly contaminated by nuclear waste, left from the Cold War weapon industry. Con- taminated soil, water, and buildings were left behind from the radioactive waste. Krupar (idem.) uses an approach she calls “transnatural ethical practice” when discussing waste and toxicity. Combining ecology, queer theory, and other social dimensions she shows the complexities and multiplicity of attitudes enrolled in the landscapes’ history and present. This is done particularly through analysis of the work of a drag queen activist, with the name of ‘Nuclia Waste’, who takes a stance on the subjectivities linked to living with waste. In Krupar’s (2012) paper many societal issues ingrained in the toxic discourse are brought up and analysed. Such are, for example, its strong link with bodies and ideas of family, health, sexuality, and environmental ethics. The paper touches upon some other very interesting points about ethics and transboundary implications of toxic waste in a larger societal context. These to me are certainly not separate from the theme of geographical placement of waste, but intimately linked. Structures and power relations shape choices of placement, but while designating certain locations for dumping waste is a conscious choice, it creates ‘problem spaces’ whose presence may be uncontrollable or unconscious. There is no escaping waste, so instead of working against it, we must ‘cooperate’ with it, as Yvonne Volkart (2019) puts it. However, as discussed above the treatment and placement of waste and toxicity are unequally distributed. The people who create the most waste, physically face it the least, as waste is often exported and dumped to low income countries. Barca (2014) calls this harm caused to humans and ecosystems through chemicals and other toxics environmental violence. Although she avoids division between North and South or what is considered ‘developed’ or ‘developing’ countries, she does see environmental violence as tightly linked with environmental injustice and social inequality. The hazards of contamination tend to be linked to places where disenfranchised people live and work, meaning that the repercussions seep into their bodies, their immediate surroundings, world of experience, and future generations (Barca 2014). Nixon (2011) calls this system of imbalance and injustice in relation to toxicity ‘slow violence’. This form of violence is harder to detect than, for example, a tsunami or a bomb, but gets slowly and exponentially worse over time. The root cause and the act of violence is much harder to pinpoint in these situations because they are “-- disasters that are anonymous and that star nobody --" (Nixon 2011, 3). In representation, the media and legislation are looking for the scandalous, immediate, and direct to report on and govern, thus the acts of slow violence demand new approaches to narrating and retelling in order to catch the public’s attention. Like Barca, Nixon (2011) brings up the poor who are most often the ones made subject to the slow violence of dealing with the waste and toxicities of the first world countries, have less possibilities to object to these injustices. Places and people ‘out of sight’ are left dealing with others’ waste, therefore further aggravating geographical inequalities.7 An example of a landscape, which reflects environmental violence is the e-waste site of Agbog- bloshie market in Accra, Ghana. In Agbogbloshie the majority of the waste constitutes of comput- ers, monitors, and televisions transported from developed countries, both through legal and illegal paths (Otsuka et al. 2012). Most of the contamination happens during disposal and recycling when

7 Nixon (2011) also makes a point about the environmentalist movement and how it is in imbalance because most of its advocates are located and acting in industrialised Western countries.

17 toxic substances leak into the soil and affect the environment, workers’ health at the site, and nearby ecosystems (idem.). Material which is of no value and cannot be recycled is dumped and also burned regularly to reduce the quantity of waste and this releases harmful toxics into the air (Huang et al. 2014). One main issue is that often countries, which receive waste for disassembling, do not have the necessary procedures in place to safely process it (idem). As Agbogbloshie is located by water, on the bank of the Odaw River which connects to the Atlantic Ocean, one effect of the contamination can be seen immediately on aquatic ecosystems (idem.). For example, the nearby Korle Lagoon used to be an important fishing ground for the local community, but it has now become too polluted and several aquatic species have disappeared due to large quantities of harmful metals, such as copper, zinc, and lead (idem.). Loss of food sources and growing health problems are just some of the effects on the local community. A large part of the narrative around Agbogbloshie is centred around this large-scale physical em- bodiment of environmental injustice and consequent social and environmental issues. However, Grace Akese (2019) has also warned us that the controversy and the problematics of toxicity draw attention to the place only through this one characteristic of it. Place-making and image construction are highly political and in this particular example, the reference of Agbogbloshie as ‘the world’s largest e-waste dump’ poses its own problems. I am bringing up the ‘making’ of Agbog- bloshie solely as a problematic but illustrative example of environmental activism, and in the next chapter, I will attempt to show how even toxic places can be represented in their many layers and encompassing countless characteristics simultaneously. The use of environmental violence concept, as we can see, is not simple. It has its purpose and suitable contexts of application, but if any given landscape becomes only known for its injustices, it brings other problems to the communities living in them. A linked concept, environmental justice, will be discussed later on when I will delve into individual stories and the importance of their representation. If environmental violence is more focused on recognising inequalities and tragedies caused by environmental factors, environmental justice attempts to tend to those issues. I prefer this somewhat more active concept and the exploration of Toxic Bios in Chapter 7 will be an example of a form of activism contributing to it.

3.3. Ghosts and trauma In the previous chapter and also when discussing slow violence I have introduced the temporal character of waste. In Chapter 2, I briefly touched upon the concept of ghost and its application in toxic contexts (Tsing et al. 2017). But to explain more precisely what I mean with this concept I am here providing some examples. I will start with the example of the Luolavuori landfill in Turku, Finland which was in use between 1941-1970. The location of the old landfill is close to the city centre in the midst of a small forest patch in between residential areas. When the waste dumping activity halted in 1970, the landscape had changed significantly, and years of dumping had created a 65-metre-high hill in the previously flat landscape. The same location was shortly after turned into a soil waste site for a while, but these days Luolavuori is a small nature reserve enjoyed by people living in its vicinity (Turku.fi). However, in March 2020, it was brought to general knowledge in the local news that there are oily leakages from the waste-filled hill and nearby ponds had turned orange (Koivisto 2020). Locals had noticed these oddly coloured ponds and strong smells around them (Vahtera 2020). In this example, we have two different types of ghosts of the past in the currently peaceful and unassuming landscape. Firstly, there is the remarkably sized hill, which quietly dominates the landscape. Local residents no longer pay attention to it and consider it a natural part of the landscape, even though it is the result of drastic land modification. Secondly, there are the ghosts of contamination manifesting through leakages and smells. These are ghosts of a not so long ago past. Moreover, they are ghosts which are not only reminders of a past activity in the landscape, but in this case show that there still are some severe effects of the past polluting activities even though they have stayed hidden for decades. 18

A concept similar to ghosts, is what Mares et al. (2013) call landscape memory. They bring forth how this concept may prove to be useful, for example, when analysing a landscape of an abandoned village. According to them, landscape memory can be detected in places which have physical characteristics born as by-products of past human land-use. Even if a village itself is long gone, there are traces of it left that are still visible in the way the ‘wild’ nature has occupied space. In this sense, it is the landscape’s memory and not the human memories of the landscape that are under inspection. Nevertheless, similarly to Tsing et al.’s (2017) ghosts, these memories that are still detectable in the landscape function as data for analysis of the place and providing material for imaginations of the past, speculation, and scientific research. For instance, the waste hill in Luolavuori discussed above could also be analysed using the concept of landscape memory. How- ever, to me the difference between landscape memory and ghost is that the former is more applicable to sites where there is no longer human remembrance of the past land use, all that remains are the landscape’s memories. Both present valuable insights, but in my view, ghost is more suitable in exploration of specifically toxic pasts as it allows for analysis of also more subtle signs, such as smells and vegetation, in addition to more remarkable landscape features. Coming back to ghosts, Verdun, the famous Western warfront of World War I in France provides another interesting example. Large parts of the landscape have remained toxic in the decades after the war due to ammunition and chemical remains, such as arsenic, in the soil. An important factor contributing to the contamination was destruction of chemical weapons in the area post war (Thouin et al. 2016). However, in the case of Verdun, the ghost I want to bring up does not evoke ‘spookiness’ as such, or even contamination, but quite the contrary – it reminds of a presumably calm and quaint past in a place scarred by war induced contamination. War’s upsetting impact on landscapes, for example through bombardments, have been known to affect and stir up the underground seed banks (Wearn 2016). In Verdun, the warfare turned the entire soil around so that old dormant poppy seeds surfaced and started growing and blooming soon after the war ended. The time dimension becomes interestingly visible in this example. The war, the quiet and isolated atmosphere of the place post-war, memories of the landscape as it was before, and the flowers haunting the landscape from a time long gone, have all become intertwined in a way which brings to attention the different time layers which still make themselves known in one way or another. The bright red poppies, the ghosts of a forgotten past manifesting itself once again were also simultaneously rendered into a symbol of loss and trauma experienced in that very landscape during the war. The unexpected bright blooms evoked an emotional response in a public dealing with loss and sorrow. This leads us also to the concept of trauma, which is linked to the landscape in terms of human experiences, but also in an ecological sense. The immense changes within the landscape, the disturbance of its defining ecological characteristics and ecosystems destroyed is proof of ecological trauma, which reaches all the way to the modern day. I will get more specific on this topic further on in the chapter. Health effects resulting from living and acting in the sphere of influence of contaminated sites can also be considered a type of ghost. Simultaneously, they are a concrete manifestation of an intertwined human-landscape trauma. Sickness caused by radiation or some other type of toxics can make real that which cannot necessarily be visually detected in our environment. Walker (2009, 6) calls physical pain a “biological indicator” of a poisonous environment. For instance, toxic sites which have gone through unproperly conducted clean-up processes, but which show no sign of the past contamination, may be deceitful and reveal a toxic past only by slowly seeping into the present seemingly immaterially through our bodies. Walker (2009, 7-8) discusses the tragedies of embod- iments of toxics especially in the context of Japan’s industrial past and does this through the concept of pain. For him sickness caused by environmental pollution is a form “enslavement to nature”, and the suffering is a reminder of humans’ “timeless connection to nature”. I do not necessarily share the idea of enslavement per se, but I do believe sickness and pain caused by our surroundings create once again a stronger link between humans and places. The first-hand trauma

19 experienced through one’s own or a family member’s sickness might also be passed on to following generations, transforming but still manifesting in the understanding of ties with a landscape and its past. Here, I move on to discuss the traumatic consequences of contamination. With the case of Ashio in Japan, I want to highlight the intertwined relationship of human and ecological trauma. Ashio was an important location for Japanese industrialisation and it is still known for its mine, which dates back to the 17th century. However, in the end of the 19th century the copper mine poisoned the formerly rich agricultural lands of the Watarase River basin as the silt coming from upstream spread with floods and contaminated the lands used for paddy cultivation (Walker 2009, 71). The pollution of the crops downstream from the mine resulted in decreased fertility, lactating deficien- cies in mothers and increased premature mortality (idem., 91). At the end of the 19th century, the copper mine had resulted in significant effects to the surrounding ecosystems through, for example, tree blighting and fish kills (idem., 93). This example to me shows how our bodies link us concretely to nature, they respond to the same stimuli as other parts of ecosystems, reminding us that part of the human trauma (the one linked with our bodies and sickness) stems from the same root as the landscape trauma in its many forms. As time passes, the effects of contamination transform both in human populations and in the landscape. Ashio has slowly changed since the mining days. Some parts have again been overtaken by vegetation and wildlife, such as Japanese macaques - a species of monkey indigenous to the region, while others, for example the sites for main processing and smelting, have remained barren (Walker 2009, 84-86). But some ghosts, which are not as loud and clear as sickness, are overlooked and many become forgotten. What is tangible and observable in the present moment hides that which has been, but the past still lingers on in the interactions and dynamics that have led to the present moment. For instance, the afore mentioned flower seeds in Verdun’s battle fields, or the infrastructure built around an old contaminated site in a specific way or toxic remains in vegetation and animals can be reminders of the past and of both physical and mental trauma. These ghosts can be forgotten or remembered, left unnoticed or given attention. Some of them are given a voice or have been preciously nurtured in collective memory, and some have become entirely lost from consciousness over time.

3.4. Memory and loss As discussed with ghosts above, a landscape can hold on to past events in many ways. Human memories of landscapes can in a similar fashion be persistent and last for generations, but there may also be contradictions that present themselves when dominating narratives do not match these more personal narrations of a place. Overlapping or co-existing narratives of a place can often be seen as separate or mutually exclusive, and there are also grand narratives highlighting some storylines seen as the most urgent and defining of a place. These serve their purpose but should not be considered a comprehensive biography of a place. There may indeed have been moments in time that have been seen as particularly defining, held in a shared memory for a long time and have thus come to dominate a place narrative. These challenging dynamics between different narrative levels can sometimes also be seen in local and global narratives, as we will see in the next chapter on Bikini Atoll. Coates (2014) however brings forth how diverging storylines and ideas can co-exist and find space in the narrative of any place. For him, nature and history are such two diverging entities which do not often meet, but which need not exclude each other. Mares et al. (2013) introduce the concept of landscape heritage which is interesting as it can also be linked to memories tied to a landscape. Landscape heritage, according to Mares et al., (2013) implies the ‘passing on’ of a landscape from one generation to another. Even though here the landscape heritage mainly refers to the physical place in question, it also simultaneously encom-

20 passes ideas and stories that have been passed on about that landscape. However, in cases of abandoned or contaminated landscapes, there is a discrepancy in this line of landscape heritage. The trauma caused by the past significantly affects the way the landscape is perceived within a community and on a personal level changing the heritage. Sometimes, when the past is considered ‘dark’ and thus unwanted, burying this part of the landscape’s history under a new official identity might be seen preferable as briefly discussed in Chapter 2.4. In order to be able to give space for multiple voices and many aspects of the past within the creation of a place, all aspects should be treated as equally valid, even if Coates (idem.) remarks that not all narratives are equal in status nor necessarily should be. Perreault (2018) discusses precisely the theme of memory in contaminated landscapes, particularly in the mining landscapes of the Andes in Bolivia. The country has built a strong identity around mining and created a proud collective memory of the national industrial past. However, as Per- reault (2018) points out, there are also strong memories of mining on an individual level – memories of a different kind. Thus, the collective victorious memory of mining is an excluding narrative to those individual ones reflecting experiences of, for instance, environmental degradation and sickness. As he points out the statues, murals, and historical narratives retelling the mining past contribute to “hegemonic memory practices” (Perreault 2018, 235). The already briefly mentioned environmental justice concept has been used by Perreault (2018) when discussing the activist movements striving for a stronger voice in retelling the lived negative experiences of the country’s mining past and I will return to this theme in Chapter 7. In this Bolivian case, the narratives exclude each other even though they are essentially built around the same focal point, as they are representing politically contesting point of views. The landscape heritage in this case has been disrupted as the memories and (at times idealised) ideas of past fertile and lush lands are nowhere to be seen in the present day. The memories are intertwined in loss and trauma, as we once again make a full circle in the themes representing the interconnected and multiple layers of (contaminated) landscapes. Another type of an example of memories and loss can be seen in empty landscapes. In a collective imagination, emptiness and unoccupied places often have a sense of eeriness and mystery to them. Their histories and at times hazardous qualities play a central part in this imagination. Reasons behind a landscapes’ emptiness can be extremely diverse, but quite often they imply some form of loss, negative change, and tragedy. Often places called ‘empty’ are those that are devoid of human presence and seen as “no longer part of the cultural world”, even though they certainly are not without past infrastructure, vegetation, and animal presence. (Smith & Gazin-Schwartz 2008, 26.) Thus, looked from another perspective, I argue these places could just as well be described with adjectives like abundant and diverse, but narrative domination have been given to the past contamination or some other tragedy leading to the abandonment of the landscape and a sense of loss. These places also may embody a rich history of human past, but it has become reduced only to the past tragedy, which is understandable but doesn’t do justice to the memories of people who may still have personal or family ties to the landscape.

3.5. The most Ironic Natural Areas Finally, a somewhat confounding theme that has risen in recent years in relation to many famous landscapes of contamination, is the connection between toxicity and rich biodiversity. There are many examples of places that seem to have fared well in terms of biodiversity despite (and sometimes because of) the toxicity of the landscape and this has taken many by surprise. These areas that have gone through contamination and abandonment, but in recent times have shown to have developed flourishing ecosystems or become wildlife refuges have made academics ponder on the question of what is ‘natural’ and whether there is such a thing as unnatural nature (Cronon 1995).

If that which we call Nature is not, or is only slightly, bothered by something that has been artifi- cially produced and considered hazardous to all living organisms, but struggles to exist in environments with basic human infrastructure, what does that say about the naturalness or unnatural- ness of toxics and human landscape modifications. Indeed, it seems that the absence of humans is the most marking factor in the heightened biodiversity of these peculiar empty places. Coates (2014) ponders on this exact troubling contrast of nature thriving there where humans have left – non-human nature faring better in a landscape of catastrophic and terrible human-induced change through, for example, radioactive waste, than in a landscape of more ‘normal’ human modifications, such as modern agricultural landscapes. In natural sciences, research around the ecologies of severely and moderately contaminated landscapes have shown the potential of these abandoned and contaminated landscapes as refugia for animal and plant life. A short video documentary8 by the New York Times, released in May 2014, shows biologist Timothy Mousseau visiting the Chernobyl exclusion zone and documenting signs of contamination disturbance in the ecology of the landscape (Fountain 2014). Mousseau states in the interview that according to his findings in places such as Chernobyl, ecologies do not truly seem to be faring better than in normal conditions (at least in such extreme cases), but there are visible patterns potentially implying some species’ adjustment to contamination. There are mutations in spiderweb patterns, disruptions in trees’ annual rings dating back to the accident and diverging colouring in certain bugs with distinguishable patterns on their carapace (idem.). Thus, it may on some occasions be a misconception that these places have become idealistic biodiversity hotspots, but there is evidence that the ecologies have adapted and maintained a high level of diversity in extremely challenging circumstances. As can be reasoned with common sense and has been discussed in previous examples, generally radiation and chemicals have a direct negative effect on living organisms, even though, for example, information on the effects of long-term exposure to moderate radioactivity in wildlife is still scarce (Møller & Mousseau 2006). There have been studies, which have shown that there are indeed mutations on the populations residing in such areas (mainly Chernobyl exclusion zone), but there is no consensus on the severity of these biological changes. Nevertheless, the previously discussed signs of potential adjustment are reassur- ing even if marginal. Ironically, the more severe the contamination, the better for the biodiversity it seems to be – the defining factor is human absence at the sites. Fortunately, contaminated sites go through clean-up processes increasingly often these days as discussed above, but even after these projects have been finished many landscapes remain too polluted for any daily use, such as residential purposes. In the US, there are several cases where such places have been turned into nature reserves as this is considered a suitable intensity of use in terms of exposure. Many of these national parks are known as Superfund sites. William Cronon (1995, 57) discusses one of them and its appellation as The Nation’s most ‘Ironic Nature Park’. The park is a wildlife refuge in Denver’s Rocky Mountains, the same area in which the drag queen social activist Nuclia Waste is based (see Chapter 3.1). The sites get their name from the US’s Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program established in 1970, which is in charge of cleaning up some of the country’s most toxic sites (USEPA 2014). The irony of the situation is discussed by Cronon (1995) as the park is now visited by people coming to admire its ‘naturalness’ and the wildlife, which thrives in a place humans have for decades avoided. At the time of Cro- non’s (1995) publication, the finishing of the site’s clean-up was considered, but it posed some more perplexing issues regarding the wildlife and what had become a suitable habitat for them. This would clearly be disrupted by a clean-up project attempting to restore another side of the site’s ‘naturalness’ through removal of the toxic wasteland, mixing up ideas of natural and unnatural and how they interact. Since then, the site has been remediated and is these days in more active use (USEPA 2017).

8 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/science/nature-adapts-to-chernobyl.html 22

So far in this thesis I have gone through relevant concepts, brought up examples of larger themes treated in academic discussion on toxic landscapes and demonstrated these through specific contaminated landscapes. From this final discussion on thriving ecologies, or at least surprisingly resilient ones, and contemplation on the contrast between them and destruction, I will move on to the first case study of the thesis. In the next chapter, I will delve into exploring a famous landscape known for its radioactivity, the Bikini Atoll while making use of the notions introduced so far, such as ghosts, dark heritage, heritage, and trauma. I will be exploring the island’s representation in different forms and particularly take interest in the contradictions that are present in the narratives of an extremely contaminated anthropogenic landscape.

4. The contradiction: The Bikini island

When I first started thinking about landscapes where pollutants, remains of a toxic past and tragedies in terms of social, cultural, and ecological loss were present, it was clear to me that contradictions were to play a part in the analysis of these places’ narratives. As toxicity represents only one (even if likely a dominant) dimension of a place, the simultaneous intermingling with a multitude of other layers of a place means that the instantaneous negative response to a contaminated place might not always be straight-forward. For example, in cases where people have close personal ties to the landscape in question or with visitors who either have no knowledge of the landscape’s past or are perhaps approaching it with pure curiosity towards the tragedies it represents, there are other factors to be taken into account. As discussed in the previous chapter, the abandonment of landscapes resulting from toxicity may also have unexpected outcomes, for instance in terms of biodiversity (Richards et al. 2008). Places are webs of meaning where individual experience and knowledge modify our understanding of its characteristics. Thus, it is not difficult to imagine the contradictory feelings one might associate with a place, which once represented home and belonging having become referred to with adjectives such as hazardous, desolated, or nightmarish. Fur- thermore, what we have been told about the past (catastrophe) may greatly differ from what we can ourselves experience in the present, or we may be taken aback by the contrast of severe destruction and thriving ecologies after decades of isolation. In a way, here we face the challenge of resisting once again the idea ingrained in our thinking that all phenomena should fit into certain disciplines, one category, and stay there in order for us to be able to research and make sense of them. However, contradictions are everywhere and coexisting even if it seems to make no sense to a ‘rational’ mind. To me, the case of Bikini atoll represents particularly high contradictions already on the level of collective imagination.

4.1. Local and global memory Bikini atoll, the former US nuclear testing ground in the Marshall Islands, Micronesia is a famous scene of the Cold War era. The atoll was nominated for the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2009 because of its significance in marking the first global and local impacts of nuclear colonialism and showcasing such anthropogenic changes in its landscape and seascape that have nearly no comparison elsewhere in the world (Republic of the Marshall Islands 2009, 11).The Marshall Islands have been inhabited for thousands of years, with first populations estimated to have arrived soon after the emergence of land 2000 to 3500 years ago and the traditional way of life on Bikini continued much the same until 1946 when the US military arrived (Rainbird 1994). Bikinians relied on the resources provided by their land, practiced agro-forestry and fishery was an important part of gaining a livelihood (Republic of the Marshall Islands 2009, 29). After the choice of Bikini Atoll for further testing of nuclear weapons in the aftermath of World War II, all 167 Bikinians were removed to a nearby island and the US military soon began testing atomic bombs (idem.). Over the course of twelve years, from 1946 to 1958, 23 tests were conducted on the islands leaving the landscape highly radioactive (Richards et al. 2008). In the late 1960s resettling of the Bikinians to their homeland was considered and a clean-up process was started. Some people returned and started rebuilding the much-altered island. However, in 1978 islanders had to move once again after the officials noticed from radiation monitoring concerningly high levels of radioactivity in the groundwater, but also in coconuts, crabs and consequently also in the urine samples of local

24 residents. The Bikini atoll was again deemed uninhabitable, and to date its people live in exile (Republic of the Marshall Islands 2009, 42). Looked from afar and from the perspective of an individual not personally familiar with the place, the impression of the island is built on two overpowering associations over any other possible ones. These are firstly its obvious radioactive past and present, and secondly its location in the Pacific ocean in the midst of turquoise waters, coral reefs, lined with sandy beaches and growing palm trees – representing the exact mental image, which has nearly universally been assigned to a ‘paradise on Earth’ through its representation in media. The absurd and contrasting notion of a ‘radioactive paradise’ is bound to fascinate the imagination as it captures both what we have been conditioned to desire and fear. Although, as I will discuss more in detail later, from a biologist’s point of view, the idea of the Bikini atoll as a paradise is not all that far-fetched - at least when considering the marine life in the surrounding waters, which has shown to be surprisingly rich. As was discussed in Chapter 2.2, in relation to dark heritage and tourism, there is a surprising but remarkable interest towards places with a dark past. This interest manifests, for example, in the creation of cultural products, and sometimes fictional stories, which might indirectly also shape the perception of the real places they allude to. But the contradictions within Bikini and its conceptualisations run deeper and are more diversified than these two overpowering associations. This becomes visible especially when the colonial heritage of the island is considered, and the exiled people bring their essential voice to the narrative of the place. As previously mentioned, the Bikinians were removed from the island in 1946 to make way for US military nuclear testing (Davis 2005). Today, the Marshall Islands are an independent self-governing republic, but the US is still in charge of its defence and external security (Kiste 2019). Nowadays, the Bikinians are in charge of the clean-up process and still hope to be able to return to the atoll one day, even though the possibility of its resettlement is still in the distant future (Stegnar 1998, 42). The conflicting stories have been analysed by Jeffrey Sasha Davis who has been studying the Bikini atoll for almost two decades, focusing on radiation levels, tourism, history as well as the social landscape of the island (Kaufman 2015). Davis (2005) discusses the post- and nuclear era born conceptualisations of the atoll as ‘deserted’ from the point of view of, for example, military and tourism activities or an imagined ‘untouched’ paradise. This contradicts clearly with the ideas of the people whose families have lived on the atoll and see the island, not just as a paradise, but also as land that provides people with a livelihood, natural resources and is most importantly a homeland. However, this important side of Bikini island as a home has not gained much attention in the wider narratives and seems to have been ignored in most of the accounts on this exceptional place. The Marshallese have a long tradition of oral history, particularly in the form of songs (Schwartz 2016 a). As a natural continuation of this tradition, the nuclear era has been retold through song and dance expressing emotions and experiences of the local people during and after the atomic bomb tests in the community. An example given by Jessica Schwartz (2016 b) is that of a Bikinian woman, Valentina, who performs a song called Radiation, which was composed by several Biki- nians in 1985. The song tells the story of loss, mourning, and problems caused by radiation and suffering. Schwartz has translated the lyrics, of which a part goes: “Woe, I am sad/devastated about my island // the place where I was young and I grew up // What things will make my throat (heart) peaceful? // So I can stop thinking about it// -- // woe, I am a stranger on an island that is not mine // There is a great deal of suffering that is appearing //--”(Schwartz 2016 b, 481). Songs such as Radiation have also become a medium of communicating the stories of Marshallese to the outside world, especially to the US, telling stories of exile and what living in diaspora means to the Bikinians. But it was particularly the song Radiation, which began a new type of activism in the Marshall Islands in the 1980s, aiming to gain a stronger “political voice in self-determination” (Schwartz 2016 a). This is just one example of the many ways in which the Bikinians are dealing with their changed homeland and the multifaceted trauma left behind. However, the retelling of the local history has unfortunately not gained much attention in the better-known narratives of 25

Bikini. There is a contradiction here having to do with the disconnection between the narrative of humane tragedy caused by colonial violence and the more loudly voiced narrative of the mysterious and dangerous landscape of the Anthropocene. The political and social issues of Bikini seem to have become secondary to the fascinating darkness of its radioactive heritage. That which interests the global community has become highlighted while that which touches the local communities is less visible in representations of the Bikini atoll.

4.2. Nuclear Kitsch The different associations and narratives discussed above oscillate between global and local ways of place creation, but there is also another approach, something which David Kupferman (2015), an American researcher in pedagogy and social studies, has called “lowbrow discourse and nuclear kitsch”. This phenomenon present on the Marshall islands where the radioactivity is alluded to in such things as alcohol drinks called ‘Bravo Shots’ served at the local airport, kitsch posters depicting mushroom clouds and sporting slogans referring to the nuclear era or even books treating the history of the Marshall Islands using nuclear puns in their names, is also interesting from the point of view of locality and globality. Connecting to this genre and to light-hearted narrations of Bi- kini’s radioactive landscape, there are also several globally known cultural products which have been inspired by the environmental history of Bikini. These are not categorised as kitsch per se, but there are still some similarities in the way the island is depicted and discussed, even if indirectly. For example, the popular television cartoon series Spongebob Squarepants, which takes place in a fictional undersea universe called Bikini Bottom, was inspired by the exceptional ecology of the Marshall Islands. The series revolves around a peculiar artificial square sponge and his friends who live in the undersea world and run competing fast food restaurants. SpongeBob is a naïve but optimistic character who navigates life with his dim-witted starfish friend Patrick. The series was created by a marine ecologist with an interest in the arts, Stephen Hillenburg in 1999 (Beaumont-Thomas 2016). SpongeBob and his friends can be interpreted as being products of Bikini’s ecology and their little anthropomorphised community having been brought to life as an unpredictable result of radiation. Although the series has been immensely popular, it has also been criticised for whitewashing and normalising colonial practices by imposing a Western cultural context to this fictional place and altogether ignoring the local culture of the Marshall Islands (Barker 2019). The kind of narrative the series is building is nevertheless intriguing as it shows how even such a tragic event as the Bikini atoll nuclear testing may become an inspiration for a multitude of phenomena diverging significantly from the physical place and its cultural context. On a local level in the islands, there is still an ongoing mourning of a lost home and of a landscape intertwined with cultural meaning. For instance, the songs discussed in the above section expressing the difficult emotions of living in diaspora and separated from the landscape of one’s family and heritage are an example of how the persistent trauma manifests and remains current among the local people. Mourning is a process, which can take many forms and for Kupferman (2015) the nuclear kitsch has several troublesome effects on it in the Bikinian context. As kitsch is a form of simplification and often attempts to render that which is personal into something universally sentimental and shared, it makes those who have little knowledge of the phenomenon feel included in it and even hijack the narrative. Thus, the kitsch products and children’s comedic cartoon series shift the narrative of Bikini to a global level and overstep the local narrative still focused on mourning. Following this it could be said that the kitsch does not allow the Marshallese to fully own their suffering and mourning process as it has become a watered-down version for all to feel something about. Kupferman’s (idem.) criticism of ‘nuclear kitsch’ has to do with diminishing the real pain and suffering caused by colonial violence in the Bikinian community through misplaced humour and lack of good taste. I see this also as a tension between the local and global perceptions of places,

26 where certain iconography, humour, and narratives can be questionable in terms of ethics. Simi- larly, disaster tours and tawdry nuclear art have been criticised of cheapening the memory of tragic events in some instances. The intrigue and pull towards catastrophes and tragedies is thus embedded in contradiction and the tension between local and global perceptions of a place continues to matter in the case of Bikini atoll’s many narratives.

4.3. Coral reefs and sunken warships As discussed in the previous chapter, sites which have been practically destroyed and rendered inhabitable for humans have shown, in some instances, to have diverse ecosystems, seemingly unbothered by the toxicity looming at their very core. The same applies to the under-the-sea wildlife in the Bikini atoll. For instance, the scarce human activity in the waters around the atoll have provided a calm and undisturbed habitat for sharks whose presence has been significantly declin- ing in most sites similar to Bikini around the world during the past century (Anderson et al. 1998). The dark tourism business on Bikini is also profiting of this undisturbed environment and scuba diving sessions are organised for tourists not only allowed to take a look at the sunken military ships, but also getting a chance to witness the beauty of coral reefs and other seemingly unbothered sea life in an exceptional context. Richard et al. (2008) have compared coral biodiversity from pre- nuclear era studies to the state of the coral reef decades after the military activities and found that a large part of the coral species have proven to be resilient and fared well, even in the radioactive seascape. The island, however, has not proven to have benefitted from the scarce human contact since the end of the nuclear bomb tests and has not experienced the same peak in biodiversity as the surrounding waters. Many newspapers have raised this as a theme around the atoll during the past decade. A few examples are ‘Quite odd’: coral and fish thrive on Bikini Atoll 70 years after nuclear tests (Roy 2017) and Marine life flourishes at Bikini Atoll test site (Squires 2008). The concept of ghost (introduced in Chapter 3.5) can also be applied to Bikini when taking a look at the sunken marine vessels at the bottom of the sea. If the coral reefs and their resilience took people by surprise in an environment which was thought of as hostile for any form of life, the crumbling military ships lying at the seafloor are a stark reminder of the activities that took place only a few decades ago. The tourism business on Bikini Atoll highlights these two aspects of the undersea experience, extraordinary coral reefs with little comparison left in the world and the exciting and imagination- igniting sight of multiple enormous metallic shells gloomily resting in the waters. As we can see, the contradictions in the themes Bikini embodies keep going further with this relatively recent narrative on Bikini as a marine wildlife sanctuary and the historical devastation of which the slowly corroding ships are a powerful visual reminder. However, the combination of these two is somehow a match, which further creates intrigue towards the atoll and does not exclude one another. It is interesting how these descriptions of Bikini are considered intriguing and complementing whereas, for instance, the past and present social and cultural narratives do not seem to find space or fit in the same larger scale representation. This fragmented identity of the island, omitted narratives and perspectives, as well as preferred storylines and imaginations become clearer as this exploration advances.

4.4. A Fabulated Eden Davis (2007) who has been investigating Bikini atoll in many research papers along the years, writes about the complexity of Bikini’s representations and its discursive conceptualisations, drawing on the Eden-like imagination of the island. He builds his analysis through discussing the contradiction of considering Bikini atoll as pristine ‘nature’ when it has not so long ago been drasti-

27 cally altered by human action (Davis 2007). The island carries ghosts from the Cold War era activities, such as military concrete bunkers and discarded objects dumped in one end of the island. Although the marine life has shown to be biodiverse, the terrestrial vegetation on Bikini is not particularly rich, as long straight rows of coconut palm trees planted by the military strongly oc- cupy the landscape (Richards et al. 2008; Richards & Beger 2013). These characteristics of the island do not immediately evoke associations to pristine wilderness and furthermore, the physical reminders of the atomic past are complemented by the unseen, the still relatively radioactive soil. In some parts of the main island, the physical remnants have been cleared away to build on the idea of bare untouched nature for tourists visiting the island (Davis 2007). To Davis (2007), the conceptualisation of Bikini as wilderness and a nature reserve is built on the visual. In his words: “most descriptions of Bikini’s environment are based on a visual aesthetic environmentalism with deep philosophical roots in Western culture” (Davis 2007, 220). To him seeing and representing Bikini as pristine and focusing on the beauty and diversity of sea life around the atolls, is based on an uninformed and shallow understanding of the island. However, the beauty and a level of narrative simplification is also strategically used by the government of Marshall Islands to gain eco- nomically from tourism (idem.). It is interesting that in this case of a contaminated landscape, the environment is not only one in which the toxicity is undetectable, or artefacts indicating contamination are scarce, but the place is even seen as divinely beautiful. This is a considerable exception within scarred landscapes, and while the invisibility of radioactivity intrigues and terrifies the human mind, it also allows it, to an extent, be disregarded. This perception of Bikini as a fascinating nuclear site and a beautiful Pacific island with thriving sea life may be a winning combination in attracting more tourism in the future. However, as mentioned, some of the old military infrastructure has been destroyed from the way of a more aesthetically pleasing landscape suiting to the idea of an untouched paradise, and such clean-up measures would also need to be taken further if the previously mentioned plans of resettlement were to be executed in the future. Taking these into consideration, it is interesting to take a look at the UNESCO world heritage list status of Bikini and the conservation management plans linked to it. The heritage site status creates a rigid framework, which greatly affects the way the landscape and seascape will look like in the future. Taking the example of resettlement plans, there might well be some issues presenting themselves in trying to match these two. The nuclear heritage has value which is seen to be worth preserving, and the kind of land-use that is necessary (especially on an island with restricted living surface) may have contrasting interests and the conservation of nuclear era infrastructure such as bunkers etc. might not be desirable in the future for the island’s population. Indeed, in the proposal of Bikini Atoll Conservation Management Plan for UNESCO one key aspect is the conservation of the nuclear testing artefacts and ensuring “the ongoing integrity of the site” (Republic of the Marshall Islands 2010, 11). Additionally, the site has been primarily nominated for its cultural heritage value, but the ecological characteristics of the site have also been considered to be of great value. Thus, the conservation plans are also taking in consideration the need for regulation of overfishing by restricting harvesting in the area and preventing illegal fishing. This naturally might present some problems for the community potentially returning to the island in the future and needing to fish more than allowed by the conservation plan. It is worth mentioning that this heritage site narrative of the place only takes into consideration the landscape as a nuclear site and leaves no room for ideas of repopulating the island. When discussing potential new constructions on the island, it is stated that “Features of Bikini Atoll that contribute to the overall character of an abandoned nuclear test site include the rows of coconut trees and the generally low level of buildings and construction. There is a need to assess any proposed demolition, construction, land-clearing, earthmoving or similar activity in light of its impact on the attributes of Bikini Atoll as a former nuclear test site.” (Republic of the Marshall Islands 2010, 16). Thus, it is visible that the narrative enforced by the management plan is one which wants to attribute no other qualities to the island than its nuclear past. The heritage site status may be 28 of use for the tourism industry as it could broaden interest in the island as an attraction, but simultaneously it seems to effectively block other uses of the landscape. I have already discussed heritage of toxic landscapes and ‘dark heritage’ in Chapter 2.2 and giving a place the status of heritage site is a way of enforcing and valuing a certain narrative of a landscape, sometimes resulting in overlooking and shadowing of other storylines and aspects. For the future of Bikini’s landscape, the implementation of a heritage framework will be significant in many ways. The physicality of the island is strongly influenced by it and so is the narrative perceptions around it. Bikini Atoll is already world famous so the UNESCO status may not be that significant in making it more widely known. However, I do see it as a factor further strengthening the global perception of Bikini as solely a landmark of Cold War, nuclear era, and anthropogenic change rather than allowing for more diverse explanations of the meaning of the island and other point of views, such as the Marshallese ones.

4.5. Visions of Anthropogenic futures The Bikini case attracted artistic interest already in the years directly after the start of nuclear weapon testing, as can be seen in Dalí’s (1947) famous surrealist painting The Three Sphinxes of Bikini using a style which the artist described as ‘nuclear mysticism’(Radford 2009, 54). The painting depicts three enormous heads rising from an otherwise bare landscape, two of them resembling mushroom clouds from nuclear explosions and one having taken the shape of a big tree with a split trunk. The fascination with nuclear physics’ power as well as the contradiction between pristine natural environment and human-induced destruction came to be discussed already then at the beginning of the nuclear era. The artistic attraction to Bikini and the possibilities it offers in playing with ideas of potential futures and meanings within Anthropogenic human-nature interactions has continued to date. As was mentioned in the introduction of this thesis, there was a certain other art project on the topic of Bikini atoll, which initially piqued my interest and led me to the topic of toxicity. In November 2018 in Berlin, I saw an exhibition by Julian Charrière (2018) by the name As We Used to Float. The exhibition focused on Bikini and its nuclear past. Later, I found another project by Charrière (2016) called First Light. This project consists of photographs of the same atoll, depicting its beaches at sunrise with beautifully coloured skies. However, the photographs have something peculiar in them, as there are shining dots scattered on top of the landscapes of blue waters and palm trees. It seems as if there had been something on top of the lens of the camera at the time of capturing the photographs. The peaceful pictures depict a landscape of toxicity, emptiness, and extreme human impact on a natural environment. They were modified with “strata from nuclear ‘hot’ sites” during the development process in such a way that it left silver-coloured dots on the images, as explained on the artist’s website, (julian-charriere.net 2016). If for Davis (2005) the visuality in media in regard to Bikini is shallow and one-sided, Charrière combines the visuality with a multitude of other difficult conceptualisations of the history of the island and its toxicity. Charrière’s full multimedia exhibition in Berlinische Galerie in 2018 consisted of spatial installa- tions, information plaques and video clips, using a multitude of ways to engage people in the complexities of human-nature relationships at play in this peculiar place. Discussing his work in an interview with Berlin Art Link (Hore-Thorburn 2018) 9, particularly in connection to the Berli- nische Galerie exhibition, Charrière commented on why he had chosen Bikini as his topic. He explains how: “In a physical and cultural way, the place is cut from the rest of world, to a certain extent”. -- “The atoll became a place that seems a speculative apparition of the future. You can look at something that no one is looking at anymore because it doesn’t exist, but is still being discussed. In 70 years, nobody

9 https://www.berlinartlink.com/2018/09/12/as-we-used-to-float-an-interview-with-julian-charriere/ 29

has been there, it’s very luxurious. We have the oppressive feeling of the radioactivity and history, which is dark and heavy on our shoulders. Then, we have the magnificent pristine coral reefs or the coconut groves that are re-growing. You always have the sensation of looking into a speculative future. It’s a place that is bound with the past, bound with the future and actually very present in an encapsulated reality. So, while you are there, you can describe yourself as a future speculative archaeologist.” (Julien Charrière 2018, boldening added) Here Charrière (2018) mentions also the pristine ecosystems and the magnificence of nature, but it is done in combination with other deeply present aspects of the landscape. In this statement and in his photography, he does not prioritise one aspect over another but rather adds dimensions to a shared web of place-identity, while also playing with the temporality and mixing of the pasts within the present moment – even speculating about the future. This representation is interesting because the photographs simultaneously reflect on existing conceptualisations and bring up new points of discussion, for instance, on the possibilities and threats of the Anthropocene. Charrière (2018) also mentions how the Bikini atoll is “cut from the rest of the world”, further engaging in the narrative of the atoll as a far-away land, which is difficult to reach or even understand. This perception to me strengthens the mythical narrative of the place, almost as if Bikini was a ‘non- place’, not truly existing in the same universe as us, but being somehow separated and belonging to another world hanging somewhere between an apocalypse and a dream. Nevertheless, Charrière engages in a very real discussion on the human modifications of the environment and what it could mean for the whole of the Earth, but to me in his imagery the fantasy-like depictions evoke ideas of a place somewhere beyond this world. The narrative he is engaging in has thus a dual nature somewhere between realism and fantastical speculation, having multiple layers even though omit- ting the socio-political struggles at play. From the mythical world of conceptualisations and speculation, there is a short road to the heated political and ideological discourse around nuclear power and weapons, which naturally links to Bikini. The radioactivity which has so defined the atoll for the better part of the past century has made the atoll into a natural nightmare. It has destroyed the home of hundreds of people, wildlife, created severe health problems even far away and finally destroyed for good the idea of humans being able to control and use the Earth’s resources in any way that suits us. In recent times, the Marshall Islands have been on the news also because of a resurfacing worry of radioactive waste leaking from the construction built for it on Enewetak atoll, called the Runit Dome, crumbling away and sinking into the sea as a result of climate change and rising sea levels (Rust 2019). This reintroduces an urgent worry of radioactivity in the area and once again brings up colonial tensions as the US refuse to tend to the issue which now is considered solely as a Marshallese worry (idem.). These worries and news pieces are part of a practical discourse pulling the curtain away from the dormant situation, which has allowed for more light-hearted imaginaries of the region on a global scale. The contradictions of Bikini atoll are embedded in being mysterious, distant and a fascinating story when not concerning oneself and at the same time being one of the most concrete proofs of the destructive capability of human crafted weapons. There is a dissonance between knowing what is real, but not experiencing it and having to concretely face it with no possibility to opt out. Perhaps that is the contradiction between narratives and lived reality. In this chapter, we have taken a glimpse into representations of the Bikini atoll and its toxicity in several different forms, such as nuclear colonialism, ecology, tourism as well as art, using interpretation and speculation as tools for creating understanding of toxicity. Next, visuality and art will be given some more attention, and these will be further explored as forms of representation within the theme of contaminated landscapes.

5. The imagery of toxic landscapes: press, media, and art

Many contaminated landscapes have been made famous through films and general media attention. Fiction films, documentaries, different forms of literature, and news articles represent a multitude of sources and ways to discuss and understand toxicity. The insights that are offered in these representations differ from academic research and narratives, often discussing more personal perceptions and ideas about toxicity. Art has an intrinsic subjectivity to it which gives valuable insights into the lived experiences of people perceiving and dealing with toxicity. As I have discussed in the previous chapter regarding the landscape of Bikini Atoll, art creates a different platform of narrative creation, enabling an approach with new expressions and even fantastic imaginations of ideas around a landscape. In this chapter, I will explore more closely some examples of representing toxicity in the field of media and art and reflect on the ways in which these representations are affecting discourse on contaminated landscapes. I will begin by discussing visuality more broadly, how it affects narratives and its influence in creating shared perceptions. From there, I will first delve into arts and bring some examples of artists who have concentrated on toxicity as a theme and then move on to discuss media in its more traditional forms and explore the narratives of toxicity present in print media, among others in pieces of investigative journalism. In the final part of the chapter, I will discuss films and documentaries as tools of narration and modes of diffusing information. Arts and visual representation have also been a topic of debate as there are some controversies embedded in the depiction of contamination and environmental degradation. The aesthetics of toxicity in the Anthropocene in certain forms have provoked ethical dilemmas and more general discussion on the responsibility arising from the growing influence art and media are having due to their continuously expanding reach. Central to this discussion is a concept called toxic sublime, which designates landscapes simultaneously encompassing toxicity, mystery, and magnificence and is integrated in the discourse around dilemmas in visually reproducing these places (Peeples 2011). This, among other topics, will be further discussed and explored in the chapter.

5.1. The narrative power of Images

“An event known through photographs certainly becomes more real than it would have been if one had never seen the photographs --” (Susan Sontag 1977, 20).

Photographs and visualisations have considerable power over general perception of places. I argue that places, which are often avoided, distant and consequently considered somewhat mysterious are especially susceptible to the power of imagery. Places of severe contamination, or places of conflict, tend to be avoided for multiple reasons and as such second-hand information on these places becomes a valuable source of gaining knowledge and understanding. Thus, as I see it, any ‘objective evidence’ such as photos become more impactful in creating an idea of the place in question. If there are no greater shared first-hand experiences of a given place, a form of transmitting information deemed trustworthy and mostly incorrupt, becomes a major influencer in the narrative of a place. However, as should be evident for anything considered a form of art, photography

31 is also subjective. Susan Sontag (1977) discusses the power of photography in her book On Pho- tography. In relation to subjectivity of photographs, she states that “[a]lthough there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are” and “[e]ven when photographers are most concerned with mirroring reality, they are still haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and conscience” (Sontag 1977, 6-7). Here, I will build on this double nature of photography, as a form of documenting the world, events, and moments in time as well as its undeniable subjectivity in framing, its discontinuation and isolation from flow of events and choice of topic deemed worth capturing in the first place. I have concentrated first mostly on single photos, but will later touch upon moving image, and discuss narratives in different forms of video. Nevertheless, visual narratives of contamination and toxicity are of interest as they have a complex relationship with these aspects of objectivity and subjectivity. When interested in imagery linking to narratives, Poole’s (1997) notion of visual economy offers some useful insights in placing imagery in a web of factors present in capturing and diffusing them. Visual economy suggests that all images are part of a system organising people, ideas, and objects, and this happens on three levels. Firstly, visuality is both producing and made possible by power relations, rendering images to commodities. Secondly, images are not isolated at any moment in time and should be understood as moving in a complex network of social, cultural, political, technological, and institutional factors (Campbell 2007). And thirdly, an important aspect to consider is how visuality influences ideas of the Other and our encounters in the world (idem.). These three levels are good to keep in mind when considering imagery on toxic landscapes as well. There are power structures determining which images get diffused to the world, the meaning of an image changes in different contexts and will be interpreted differently at different points in time. Imagery as a form of displaying and sharing information deserves some attention too when attempting to create understanding on the ways in which it affects narratives. Despite what was discussed above, photography quite often tends to be considered an objective way of capturing a moment and representing reality. This perception, and the undeniable usefulness of photography in illustrating and retelling events of the world, as a natural continuation is used by the news media. Showing, in addition to verbally retelling, is also making information to a degree more accessible. However, as Sontag (1977, 23) points out, photographs in themselves do not help create understanding. To her, they may show and prove something, but they do not have the capability to transmit understanding of the world. This is because a photograph always omits more than what it discloses, and understanding requires knowledge on how something functions, rather than just looks (idem.). Thus, the construction of narrative is possible and inevitable in diffusing certain types of images, but these narratives do not necessarily bring more understanding on the phenomenon depicted itself, but rather understanding on the perception of the phenomenon. An example of analysing visuality in the news is brought up by Campbell (2007), who discusses the conflict of Darfur and how press photography influenced its international reception. Campbell (2007) touches upon the importance of visuality and photographs in modern geopolitics and his focus is on the way photographs depicted people in Sudan and what kind of a discourse they were creating of the people living in the midst of a conflict. To him, the most pressing issue with representation of one certain type of imagery in a specific context (mostly women and children in refugee camps in his particular case study) is how it attempts to tell the viewers how to feel about the place, situation, or object by trying to capture photos which link to already familiar symbols and only further en- force ideas of, for example, the self and the other, or notions such as developed and underdevel- oped (Campbell 2007). Thus, a certain narrative reinforcement is often present in photojournalism. Later in this chapter, I will present media’s representations of toxicity more specifically and also from other approaches than merely visual aspects of journalism. However, here we have seen that the images in connection with written pieces of news impact the reception and further perception of the news case.

Another instance in which photography is used these days as a way of communicating to the world and about the world, although without the same authority and with much less intention of depicting ‘reality’, is social media. This medium is intriguing when considering visual storytelling and representation of places through image both on small and large scale. Interestingly, Sontag (1977, 24) already over four decades ago stated that “needing to have reality confirmed and experience en- hanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted.” This applies extremely well to our current world filled with social media and individuals constantly documenting their experiences and realities, curating a gallery of one’s everyday and vacation highlights. This may seem quite far from representing toxicity, but as we have seen previously, toxicity has become mundane and it is not particularly unusual to be confronted by it in daily life environments. Here, I want to briefly bring up a specific phenomenon linking toxicity and social media, which got media attention from several newspapers in 2019. An article called It Looks Like a Lake made for Instagram. It’s a Dump for Chemical Waste by The New York Times introduces a turquoise lake of contaminated wastewater in Siberia close to Novosibirsk, which has become a popular spot for photoshoots for people seeking out social media shareable content (Kramer 2019). The tropical looking arctic lake has featured in many social media pictures and has been renamed as the “Maldives of Novosibirsk”. Some are posing in front of the lake as if on a holiday somewhere far away from Siberia and others have taken more ‘realistic’ photos, which also reveal the industrial backdrop with rusty pipes lying on the ground (idem.). This phenomenon calls attention to multiple themes related to toxicity and imagery’s relationship. Firstly, the framing and setting up of a toxic lake to be perceived as something else shows the power of visual manipulation. Secondly, the unnatural yet mesmerising aesthetic of the contaminated water is a suitable example of toxic sublime, which will be discussed more in detail later and thirdly, the wilful exposure of oneself to toxicity in order to get documented and photographed in an aesthetic setting is thought- provoking and makes one wonder about the dynamic between ‘the reality’ and the ‘perceived/created reality’ for the audiences. Authenticity is another notion, which often is debated in connection to social media content. However, how can authenticity be defined and what would that mean for visualisations of contamination? This discussion on imagery and photography more generally has served as a starting point in exploring cases of multiple visual representations of contamination and has brought up some of the tensions present when discussing photography’s placement between depicting reality, observing and analysing manipulated content differing from subjective expressions. Visuality is a major part of modern communication and thus applying some of the themes and ideas brought up in this section are useful to keep in mind as we go forward to first discuss visual art projects, then journalism on a few specific contamination cases and finally cinematography and entertainment business in the context of discussing toxicity. All these modes of representation are somehow linked to visuality even though having varied approaches to it. In what follows, I will discuss what is often called environmental art and introduce some creative visual representations of toxicity.

5.2. Toxic art When looking at art projects depicting topics of environmental degradation, pollution, and contamination, there seems to be a few key themes that keep arising. Among others anthropogenic change, criticism of human actions particularly in relation to resource use, industrialism and capi- talist material culture, and tragedy of losing and harming ‘nature’. This kind of environmental art with an instrumental quality, meaning going beyond making art for creating something pleasing to look at, and in addition (or instead) taking a stance for environmental or social issues emerged in the 1970s (Ulbricht 1998). Perhaps in this kind of an approach, there is an intrinsic idea that that which is reproachable should also visually be unpleasant, conveying an unambiguous message of criticism and associations with only negative human impacts. Interestingly a phenomenon contesting this idea has emerged in recent times with visual artists playing with the contrast of depicting 33 something generally perceived as morally reproachable and dangerous as beautiful and even awe- inspiring. This current of toxic representation, which has been denominated as toxic sublime, has however also been met with controversy as some see it to be ethically questionable to be showing something ‘bad’ in an aesthetic light. Furthermore, it has been argued that photographs depicting contaminated landscapes as beautiful or attractive are misleading, lead to belittlement, and even celebration or idealisation of immense human induced environmental degradation (Peeples 2011). Among others, Peeples’ (2011) article on toxic sublime and Kane’s (2018) article on landscape photography have given attention to this debate and taken part in the discussion on beauty, aesthetics, waste, and toxicity. The concept of toxic sublime has also been discussed in a blogpost entitled Toxic Sublime and the Dilemma of the Documentary by Meghan Bissonette (2016). I want to bring up this concept as it is an interesting point of view to toxicity and art as a medium of sensibilisation. Toxic sublime is defined and characterised as a place or an object which is simultaneously terrifying and stunningly beautiful, and can be seen as a theme, for example, in the already mentioned artworks by Charrière (2016; 2018). Bissonette (2016) discusses several artists and their approach to aesthetic but simultaneously environmentally degrading landscape modifications. According to her, Edward Burtynsky who is a well-known photographer in the field, uses the beauty of his photographs as a starting point for opening a conversation about the alarming state of the environment (idem.). Thus, the photographs alone do not necessarily evoke the hoped- for response of more aware audiences, but they are an invitation for reflection and becoming more informed about the effects of industrialisation or other harmful practices on the environment. In combination with pieces of text giving context and explaining some of the activities within the depicted landscape the viewer is perhaps surprised and further immersed in the artwork and the themes it presents. Another artist working within the same realm is Marc Quinn, as becomes obvious already from the title of his series The Toxic Sublime (2014). This collection consists of metallic painting-sculpture hybrids of contaminated landscapes, which are described as having “formal elements of clas- sical landscape painting but with the resonance of something wrecked, like a discarded remnant from some kind of physical disaster” (Marc Quinn 2014). The art pieces look like alien sunsets and have been made with photographs imprinted on sheets of aluminium which have been manipulated and ended up with a watercolour-like look (idem.). There is a similar theme and, seemingly also a thought-process, behind the works of Quinn (2014) as there are in the works by Charrière (2016). In an interview for NewScientist, Quinn states that he “-- wanted to reflect the paradox that if you looked at a nuclear explosion miles away, you would be terrified and horrified, but you would find beauty in it” and this indeed is in line with the series’ title. Beauty within destruction both keeps fascinating and provoking (Ings 2015). I see the fact that Quinn’s (2014) works are not photographs, as opposed to all the previously mentioned artworks, giving him some leeway in presenting environmental degradation in an aesthetically pleasing way. I argue that paintings and less ‘realistic’ depictions of toxicity do not face the same criticism as photographs, because of the previously discussed perceived objectivity of camera, which seems to be considered to bring a heavier responsibility. Perhaps thus more clearly interpretative and creative modes of artistic representation are more easily allowed to make such depictions. A differing approach can be seen in Chris Jordan’s work. He is a contemporary photographer who produces ecocritical visuals drawing on numerical data, especially in representing waste. Jordan has stated that his focus is on the meaning transmitted through the visual representation of numerical data and not on the aesthetics of the photograph. The artist has a piece, which takes a stance against toxics called Roundup (2015). The work depicts 213 000 bees piled on top of each other. The weight of these bees is equal to the weight of pesticides put in the environment around the world approximately every twenty minutes (Dauray 2020). As mentioned, notion of beauty is something Jordan has not desired to bring into the equation, quite the contrary, in fact (Kane 2018). This contrasts with previously mentioned approach by Burtynsky who intentionally emphasises the contrast of beauty and industrial landscapes to evoke more interest and conversation among

34 the public. Nevertheless, many find Jordan’s numeric data visualisations fascinating and pleasing to look at despite its irrelevance to the artist himself. Another already briefly mentioned point comes through in Jordan’s approach – the intangibility and invisibility of toxicity. Jordan has gone around the issue by creating parallels between the number of bees (crucial to ecosystems) and amount of pesticides, strongly engaging in discussion on toxicity caused by modern agriculture and industrial practices, but never directly showing an affected landscape or direct consequences of the phenomenon. The interpretative and ever-changing ideas in reception of artworks suit well discussion on toxicity and contaminated landscapes. In the case of Roundup (2015), there is a feeling of threat with the presence of the mountain of (presumably) dead bees and also a feeling of unknown because we do not know, and are not shown, exactly where and how the effects of toxicity will appear. In this sense, it perhaps comes closer to the viewer who cannot easily distance oneself from the phenomenon of toxicity as the artwork does not tie it to one specific far-away landscape. The global reach of toxicity is represented in a visual, which at first glance seems simple and one-dimensional, but reveals more as the viewer engages in the numeric data behind the visual. From this interpretative and creative approach to toxic representation, we will make a shift towards more structured narratives in the form of news media. I will bring up a few specific cases of industrial contamination cases to get a glimpse into how the far-reaching news industry focuses their narratives of contamination.

5.3. Press on contamination

Fig. 1. A screenshot of a New York Times article.10

Land and water toxicity at their worst, in addition to grave environmental degradation and ecosys- tem collapses, have horrifying social repercussions in exposed communities, causing health problems, birth defects, and even premature deaths. Undeniably, media has power to define a predom- inant public narrative for cases of contamination and draw attention to any chosen aspect. The people who are listened to, questions around official and unofficial information and politics, among other things, all frame the focal point of the narrative. Interestingly, the news as a type of narrative is sometimes invisible to audiences. Even though the general structure and wording of news is familiar to all as a framework (i.e. if it were to diverge from the familiar format, it would be noticed by most of us), the news format is often taken as something neutral and not interpretative. Sometimes it may be assumed that there is no room for subjectivity or value-based retelling

10https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html 35 in the world’s events in the news framework and wording, and the news are taken only as truthful representations of the reality. This has recently been widely challenged for example in the discussion on fake-news and the increasingly visible political divide of news media, especially in the US. Nevertheless, what is considered ‘quality journalism’ and respected media sources are often trusted to attempt to portray the world from a somewhat objective viewpoint. Based on this, it is interesting to see from what perspective and with what kind of a focal point do the news media and investigative journalism approach contamination cases and toxicity. Some severe cases of contaminated lands and waters, most often caused by industrial practices in rural areas, have gotten large media coverage during the past decades. News reports, long articles, documentaries, and films have been made to spread awareness and attract attention from wider audiences. Here, I will focus on a few such cases of environmental misconduct and how these stories of contamination have been retold in media. A famous and still very current case from the last half a century is a chemical manufacturer DuPont’s use of a harmful chemical, PFOA, in large amounts in West-Virginia, United States. The company buried their waste in landfills on estates bought from local farmers (Rich 2016). An article published in The New York Times in January 2016, “The lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare” brought forth the battle against the company from a corporate defence lawyer (idem.). The lawyer, Rob Bilott, took on the case when he found out about the contaminated lands with dying cattle and their disturbing bright green in- testines. This was in the region where Bilott’s grandmother had lived, and he had spent his child- hood summers, so he had a close and personal relationship with this landscape. Still on-going, Bilott has spent nearly two decades trying to prove the hazardous qualities of the chemical in question, to get the company to admit and take responsibility for the intentional actions of burying waste, and collecting evidence for the connection with severe health hazards, and then finally taking measures to end the use of the chemical itself. Shockingly, the process has kept taking many turns for the worse up until recent times. The PFOA chemical, which is used in many industrial and consumer products, is a non-naturally occurring perfluorinated compound and it does not break down in the environment, which leads to its accumulation in plant and animal life, including in humans (Steenland et al. 2010). It has been recently proven that the chemical has spread far as it has been found in most of the tested population in the USA as well as in large amounts of people in other industrialised countries (idem.).

Fig. 2. A screenshot of a Huffington Post article.11 Articles, such as Huffington Post’s in-depth account, in August 2015, and New York Times’ article in 2016 were the initial trigger for widespread consciousness of the DuPont case and its severity

11 https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/welcome-to-beautiful-parkersburg/. 36 in the US. Huffington Post’s article gave a voice to people fallen ill due to the contamination through interviews whereas the New York Times’ told the story through the eyes of Rob Bilott, the lawyer who for years fought the case. One of the people who were interviewed for Huffington Post’s article was Jim Tennant, a farmer in Parkersburg who with his family experienced first- hand the effects of contamination through, for example, their cattle falling ill and dying and were one of the first ones to seek legal measures. Another person interviewed was Sue Bailey, a former employee of DuPont who was exposed to the chemical at work during pregnancy, resulting in her son having birth defects and requiring several surgical procedures (Blake 2015; Rich 2016). The case of Parkersburg was made into a large-scale feature film in 2019 called Dark Waters. The film brought the case more visibility internationally and gave it a voice in popular culture’s narrative of toxicity in the Anthropocene. In these two long in-depth articles, the focus was on people affected by the contamination in some way and also the lengthy legal struggles. The Huffington Post article (Blake 2015), features high quality photographs from locations around Parkersburg, interviews with people affected by the toxics, illustrations of DuPont’s old adverts and documents such as emails revealing discussions about contamination within the company years before the scandal was revealed. The article is divided into seven sections titled: The Farm, Plastic Man, The Factory, The Cover-up, The Back- lash, The Consequences, and The New C8 - each of which presents a stage of the scandal unfolding. The tone of the article is dramatic, which is visible already in the title “Welcome to beautiful Parkersburg, California – home to one of the most brazen, deadly corporate gambits in U.S. history”, but at the same time credible as it presents documents, a lengthy historical background of the company, the town and detailed information on the experiences and observations of locals. The article is not a piece of news per se as it represents investigative journalism of which the tone differs significantly from news reports. Culpability, tragedy, escaping responsibility, and danger are some of the most prominent themes of the article. The New York Times article (Rich 2016) has a slightly different approach as it focuses on the journey of Bilott himself, and how he has been working with the case for decades. These articles are building on a similar narrative, which is based on an irresponsible and greedy company evading responsibility and consequently causing immense harm to the environment and people. The photographs in the Huffington Post article reflect simultaneously the normality of the industry’s presence in the town, the tragedies of health effects caused by exposure and a level of obsoleteness at a local farm. Some differences are the Huffington Post’s focus more on the economic and social landscape of Parkersburg, whereas the New York Times centres around the legal battle. The briefly mentioned feature film Dark Waters (2019) has a very similar approach to the story as The New York Times article. The film focuses on the work of Rob Bilott and how he became engaged in the case and has for years struggled to bring justice to the people most affected. The ending of the film shows how the battle is not over and Bilott still keeps on fighting for individual people. At the end, it is told that Bilott has won three enormous settlements with DuPont and the class action was also settled for hundreds of millions of dollars. The ending of the film thus brings a closure to the legal battles, but it is mentioned that the chemicals still persist in populations around the world and many hazardous chemicals remain unregulated to date. The narrative of this film, similarly to the articles above, is focused on people and their health. The environment does not gain much attention, and this may be due to creating attractive storylines suitable for drama films. I will get more in-depth to this theme in the next section.

5.4. Representation in film and documentary Thus far, I have discussed imagery, photography, art projects, and news articles relating toxicity. In this section, I am getting deeper into the narratives created through moving image, both in drama and documentary. Entertainment business has a big role in diffusing stories of contamination and 37 environmental injustice, as seen with the example of the film Dark Waters (2019). The factual accuracy of films or shows varies, but their role in spreading information and awareness cannot be overlooked. The Parkersburg case and the worldwide spread of hazardous chemicals has only recently gained more media coverage thanks to the film. This shows how impactful popularised storytelling through media and documentary truly is. However, as these cinematographic works are made for mostly entertainment purposes, the focus of the narrative often changes from what we have seen earlier, for example, from critical and scientific representations and switches to having to make compromises taking into consideration several factors in the narratives. As was seen in the case of Dark Waters (2019), the story becomes one about a courageous individual fighting for justice, focusing the narrative on human struggles and achievements against big institutions and corporations, where, I would argue, the issue of contamination itself sometimes becomes secondary to the characters of the story and their actions. This is not to say it is less valuable to tell the human stories, which are intrinsically linked to contaminated environments, but the narrative that is created of contamination and toxicity in dramatized retellings of real cases often has a different focal point than what we have seen previously. It could be argued that toxic cases can become a backdrop or an intriguing premise for a story, but in themselves they might more often than not be the centre of the film. Another case made famous by a film was a drinking-water contamination in Hinkley, California, in the 1990s, retold in the film Erin Brockovich (2000). The case featured a group lawsuit from the town’s residents against a company called Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) for dumping a type of carcinogen into a nearby pond in the 1950s and 1960s, contaminating the town’s groundwater (Genecov 2019). The film was one of the first to take on the task of retelling an environmental justice case in this scale and it gets its title from a local woman, the protagonist of the film, who worked as a legal clerk in the 1990s and found out about the company’s misconducts. The film follows Erin Brockovich’s story as a single mother starting a new job and almost by chance coming across evidence of PG&E’s actions and revealing its cover-ups. The structure and style of the film are similar to those of Dark Waters (2019), focusing on an individual engaged in a battle over justice with a powerful company. However, as opposed to Dark Waters where the ending is left to a degree open and leaves behind a feeling of unfinished business, in Erin Brockovich (2000), the story is brought to an end when the energy company is made to face the consequences and take responsibility for its past misconducts and the town’s residents win the group lawsuit. There is little to no discussion on the ‘after’ of the environment or on remediation projects. An article in Grist (Genecov 2019) discusses the current state of Hinkley and what happened in its landscape after the end of the film. There have been clean-up efforts since the reveal and lawsuit, but the land is still contaminated, and remediation is predicted to go on for several decades. The article gets into the topic of the town’s economic crash and disappearance of almost half of the town’s population due to people panic selling their houses and decreasing job opportunities. According to the article, some of the actions attributed to Brockovich in the film were in fact by another local activist called Roberta Walker (Genecov 2019). A film can raise awareness and make public that which otherwise would soon be forgotten, but it also works within the limits of entertainment, meaning intriguing characters and narratives. For the sake of the story told in the Hollywood film, what happened in the community after the court case or who did what is reduced to one storyline or made irrelevant. Thus, perhaps films for entertainment purposes paint a bigger picture, by at times simplifying and scandalising, without going deeper into analysis of toxicity’s widespread effects, but still contribute to raising awareness and giving individual activism a certain form of platform for recognition. The case of Chernobyl and the eponymous HBO television series released in 2019, are also worth mentioning as the series’ structure and narrative differ from the previously discussed films. Cher- nobyl (2019) retells the story of one of the most well-known contamination cases in the world, 33 years after the accident took place. The 1986 disaster close to the Ukrainian town of Pripyat re-

38 sulted from an explosion of a nuclear power plant reactor, leading to severe radioactive contamination. The television series consists of five episodes, starting from the night of the accident and leads up to the moment when the disaster covered up by the Soviet Union was revealed internationally and proper actions were taken to prevent further contamination and dealing with the damaged reactor. As soon as the series was released, it gained enormous attention, being praised by the public, arts community, and film industry as well as scientists crediting its factual accuracy and attention to detail. A webinar with the title (Re)telling Chernobyl was held in May 2020 organised in collaboration by UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, KTH Environ- mental Humanities Laboratory and Lithuanian Art and Culture in the UK (Evans et al. 2020). In the virtual event, nine scholars from different fields and the director of the HBO series came to discuss the impact of the series and visualisation’s power in treating such a topic. The webinar brought forth many themes from the development of robot systems in extremely damaged environments to the impacts the series had on the filming location in Lithuania and the application of notions such as ‘truth’ and ‘accuracy’ in (televisualised) storytelling of a disaster. Already the organisation of such an event shows that the series had a significant impact in sparking conversation and bringing in new angles. The variety of topics and fields intertwined and brought up by the series shows how much there is to research within toxicity and its visual representation. Factual accuracy, telling of real stories of real individuals and using material such as Svetlana Alexievich’s (1997) book Voices from Chernobyl seem to have been some of the characteristics explaining the popularity of this cinematographic representation. In my view, the main narrative of Chernobyl (2019) is one of doom, destruction, and the dangers of lack of transparency and scientific collaboration. It gives credit to those who risked their lives and health while making the accident site harmless, and even though the film features a ‘hero’ Valeri Legasov, the narrative is not limited to one person’s story. The retelling of the nuclear accident attempts to include more of the larger damage done and also show those who were severely impacted but forgotten as nameless faces. The dramatized retelling of an incident such as the Chernobyl disaster is interesting as the partly fictional and artistic nature allows the viewer to examine some of the interpretations, ideas, and perhaps even values placed in the retelling itself. Another form of filmography is documentary, which has a similar purpose, as in telling stories of the world, but a diverging approach to retelling them. Similarly to drama films, a documentary can be analysed through the themes, visuality, and interactions showed, but for instance symbolism is applied in a different way. In drama, symbolism is used as food for imagination and free interpretation as each person will, and should, make their own interpretations of the film and the embedded meanings in it. With documentaries however the use of symbolism is more careful - there is room for interpretation but in a more subtle way. Es- pecially in modern more ‘poetic’ forms of documentaries, images and words are used to evoke feelings when footage of real-life situations is combined to convey a story of real people and places. Bill Nichols (1991) discusses the more traditional approach to crafting narratives in documentary and focuses on documentary film as a source of knowledge and its role as factual docu- mentation of the world. Nevertheless, as Nichols (1991) goes on to discuss, there are discourses, choices of style, and strategies behind each documentary film even those that claim to be objective representations of a phenomenon, a place, or an event. Combining of arts and documentary practices has become increasingly popular and, for example, many anthropological documentaries aim for a pleasurable aesthetic entity as it is considered to enhance and add to the story being told. Frankham (2013, 2) describes this combination as a “mixing of methods, philosophy, intention and technique that results in an engaged critical aesthetic practice”. Through a more interpretative and visual approach another layer is added, which may help audiences appreciate the experience more and engage in the presented subject matter on a deeper level (Frankham 2013). This idea matches that of Burtynsky (discussed in section 5.2.) who sees his art and intriguing imagery as a way of creating a connection between the viewer and the piece of art, thus creating a bridge for further discussing issues around toxicity and the environment. In many ways the borders between drama, documentary, and art have become somewhat blurred and irrelevant as there are many connecting points between these forms of visual representation and narrative creation. 39

Toxicity, waste, and environmental issues more generally have gained increasing attention within documentaries during the past years, especially in Europe and North America (Schoonover 2013). The capacity to draw attention to something that is avoided in everyday life and make it visible by steering people’s gaze, is one of cinematography’s assets in raising awareness for diverse issues. Schoonover (2013) argues that waste can be portrayed through photography in a way, which reminds us of its presence and brings it back to our consciousness. This becomes interesting when discussing toxicity, which cannot be visualised with the same ease as physical waste. As seen in Chapter 4 when discussing the artwork of Charrière (2018), toxicity and danger were present in his photographs, but in a subtle way - implied but not shown. As I have already mentioned previously, to me depicting toxicity makes for an interesting theme in the field of arts as toxicity is well suited for more interpretative modes of representation. With the mode of documentary depiction however, the medium usually attempts to portray the issues realistically, instead of through reflection and interpretation, and in this way, it is challenged by the invisibility and visual evasiveness of toxicity. This leads to toxicity being ‘proven’ through secondary sources, following the agency of the toxics and visualising those instead. An example of a documentary, which is structured in such a way, is Jozi Gold (2019). The documentary produced by a Swedish film company, portrays struggles regarding toxic repercussions of over a century of gold mining in Johannesburg, South Africa. It follows a few local people engaged in the issue, focusing especially on the tireless activism of Mariette Liefferink. For years, Liefferink has spread awareness of the health effects of the contaminated land, water and dust within the affected community, as well as trying to plead to decision-makers to take the case into closer inspection. The mining companies having failed to live up to their duty of care, Liefferink demands remediation and justice for the people who have and continue to suffer as a result of the mining industry’s impacts. Interestingly, the documentary has a similar approach to telling a story of contamination as the previously discussed films Dark Waters (2019) and Erin Brockovich (2000) with a tireless, righteous citizen fighting for a cause and a community. What is different in this documentary from the Hollywood films is that winning a court case in environmental justice is not the end of the issue. As the documentary conveys, toxicity is part of the community and the landscape, and there is no quick fix. The responsibility is bounced back and forth between different owners of the mines and the state, and it becomes sadly evident how little even the officials in charge of regulating environmental damage and health risks care about taking action. The documentary creates its narrative through depiction of a landscape, which has been robbed and degraded for over a century and which in turn has had severe social implications. Some of these are the tragic health effects over many generations, but also unemployment and growing inequalities as “the poorest of the poor” are the ones experiencing the effects of the toxic environment the strongest and are the most vulnerable. Some scenes are powerful, showing the tone of the documentary and focal points. Such are, for example, footage of children playing in toxic dumps bare- footed, or witnessing the inhumane working conditions of the illegal mines where due to lack of safety measures men risk lives every day, or following community members speaking up and showing their anger in an open meeting with a gold company. The focus is on the social, supported by scientific explanations on the dangers of exhausted and neglected mines, retelling and representing toxicity through the social effects it causes. Additionally, the administrative struggle and difficulty of reaching those in a position to make a change becomes painfully clear. In this chapter I have discussed toxicity’s representation in different forms of media and art, giving special attention to visual forms of representation. The approach of photographers and visual artists varies from that of filmmakers and journalists, and they build on different focal points of toxic narratives. The discussion on toxic sublime has brought up an interesting contrasting discussion on forms of environmental activism and their contesting views on what is acceptable representation of anthropogenic environmental degradation. In terms of entertainment and spreading awareness of environmental harm caused by misconducts, a popular format can be seen with a battle of

40 justice between individuals and giant corporate machines. More nuanced and layered representations can be found in documentaries, which in the case of Jozi Gold (2019) came across by incor- porating aspects of social justice, scientific details, administrative struggles, and individual perspectives. From this exploration in media and visual world of representation, I will next move on to explore a specific case of contamination in Southern Sweden and treat the theme of what it is to live in a remediated, but still scarred landscape.

6. Living in a damaged landscape: Teckomatorp

At several instances throughout this thesis, I have mentioned how toxicity can no longer be considered a rare occurrence. I have argued that toxics have even been rendered to a somewhat mundane reality through their global spread. This has become clear, for instance, through the copious representations in arts and media discussed in the previous chapter. But what does it feel like to experience toxicity first-hand in your everyday environment? To live in a landscape which has been scarred, to still feel suspicious when tasting water from the tap, and to remember the harms done to your loved ones and others near you. How does it feel to remember the fight for justice with the company responsible for contaminating your home and the struggle to get the authorities to listen? There are many stories that could be told here, but I will zoom in on the case of Teckoma- torp and the story of Monica Nilsson, an activist, and a local mother who brought the most famous contamination case in Sweden to public consciousness. For decades now, Monica has been the face of environmental activism and resistance in Teckoma- torp, giving interviews for newspapers, researchers, and others interested in her story. Based on data consisting of news articles and interviews she has given, I will discuss the story of an environmental activist who has witnessed the entirety of the contamination case from the 1970s to date. In addition, I will discuss details of the case, how the remediation has been unfolding, as well as present a more general discussion on Teckomatorp as a scarred landscape. As I have discussed in Chapter 2 and 3, landscapes’ have an identity and when applicable, toxicity has a strong hold over that said identity. In Sweden Teckomatorp certainly became a symbol not only of a toxic landscape – but also of the ineffectiveness of the environmental legislation of the time. Teckomatorp is a small town in southern Sweden still known for its chemical scandal in the 1970s, even though remediation processes have been in operation for years. The identity of the town has been strongly impacted by the past and the many decades it has taken to deal with the contamination. The case of Teckomatorp allows us to understand the small-scale and marginally known toxic conditions as well as the impacts toxicity has had on the close ties between locals and their town. I will start this chapter by presenting some relevant background on Teckomatorp, the unfolding of the key events leading to contamination, and then move on to discuss Monica’s role and experiences as a local resident and as an involuntary yet essential activist. Remediation and some of the actions taken after will be given attention in the following section, and the final part will be focused on discussing further repercussions and representations of the town.

6.1. Historical background and contamination context Teckomatorp is a small residential town of about 2400 people in the municipality of Svalöv, Skåne in Southern Sweden and it was the scene of the country’s most severe soil and water contamination case to date in the 1970s (Henriksson 2018). The town initially developed around a small railway station and has ever since been functioning as a communication point between the municipality and bigger cities in the vicinity, such as Lund, Malmö, and Copenhagen (idem.). However, since the 1970s, the small Southern town has been known to most Swedes for its toxicity, environmental tragedy, and scandal. A pesticide producing chemical company, called Bönnelyche & Thuröe, moved the location of its factory from Copenhagen to Teckomatorp in 1965 (Bevmo, 2006). The local factory produced a pesticide called hormoslyr, a chemical used in forestry to suppress birch and made from the same substance as the notorious Agent Orange used in the Vietnam war in the 1960s. The ownership of the company changed a few times, along with the name, before becoming 42

BT Kemi in 1971. In the 1970s locals of Teckomatorp started noticing a persistent foul smell hanging over the area and waste leaking from the factory to the nearby rivers (Mårald 2001). The chemical company had been applying for a wastewater discharge permit for eight years and was finally granted it in 1975 (Bevmo 2006). The exposure of the company’s misconducts regarding waste management was revealed in 1977 when 200 barrels of waste were found buried in the ground near the BT Kemi factory. Around the same time there was also a lawsuit from a local gardener whose plants suffered from the contaminated water sourced from the local river. Two years later an additional 600 buried containers of toxic waste were discovered further revealing the extent and severity of the crime. BT Kemi had been burying toxic waste around the factory since 1971 and discharging improperly treated wastewater to the local river Braån. The affected site was in total about ten hectares in size (Svalövs kommun 2006). After the revelation of these events, the case gained enormous media coverage and became the biggest scandal in Sweden’s environmental contamination history, also affecting the definition of an ‘environmental crime’ in Swedish legislation (Mårald 2001). What shocked many residents of Teckomatorp and activists was that since at the time there was no legislation for the kind of misconducts that had happened, there was no simple way of holding responsible individuals accountable. Environmental and local activism played a big part in exposing the misconduct of the chemical company and drawing public attention to the issue, as I will discuss in the next section (Mårald 2001). In 1977, the court ordered the gardener Carl Johan Ahl to be compensated for the damage done to his plants and BT Kemi was ordered to be shut down by the Swedish Government, which soon led to the company’s bank- ruptcy (Bevmo, 2006).

6.2. Monica’s story Monica Nilsson was a young mother in 1975 when she became the driving force in fighting for justice in the above discussed environmental contamination case (Anjou 2017). Still today Monica is living in Teckomatorp and has family roots there - the town has always been home for her. Just before the scandal started unfolding, she and her husband had moved into a house they had built in a new residential area close to the industrial site. That is when they started to be bothered daily by foul smells and their son, who already had bad allergies, started to get aggravating symptoms. Initially for Monica, the smells became a constant reminder of something being off and her son had persistent coughs, rashes as well as irritated eyes, which made her increasingly worried. Sim- ilar symptoms were appearing in other children in town and a few years on several women had miscarriages, Monica being one of them. Also a teenaged boy in the town died tragically from coming to contact with the pesticide produced by BT Kemi. Monica’s cousin Åsa and her partner had both worked at the factory and from them she unofficially received a confirmation for what she had already suspected - the factory and its activities were behind these increasing problems. Åsa told her that the company dumped toxic waste in the ground during night and some of the employees were aware of it (Nilsson 2006, 5). Monica told Helsingborgs Dagblad (HD) newspaper in 2003 that once she connected the different symptoms to BT Kemi’s factory, she started investigating independently, calling authorities, and consulting experts (Anjou 2017). She even wrote an open letter to the prime minister, Olof Palme, hoping to attract at least some media attention for the issue (Nilsson 2006, 97). In an interview for Sydsvenskan in 2015 Monica explained how she never intended to become the face of resistance in Teckomatorp, but people around her encouraged her to start speaking up because she lived close-by and had first-hand knowledge of the symptoms in her own family. She also had the spare time since she was staying at home with her children at that time. (Capuder 2015.) Not long after the events started unfolding, Monica, her husband Kjell, and other active members of the community started collecting names for a petition, and in a matter of a few days they had gotten 600 signatures, representing well over half of the town’s adult population (Eriksson 2020). In several interviews Monica has stated that speaking up and eventually getting major personal media attention has not been an easy journey. At the time of the scandal, some people in town were against accusing BT Kemi and digging up negative information, due to the company being 43 an important employer in the small town, and this put her in an uncomfortable position. Early on, before the scandal had been revealed, Monica also talked to a local newspaper about what was going on but the article regarding the suspicions was never published. It later turned out that BT Kemi’s CEO had threatened to sue the small newspaper in case they did. Additionally, Monica received several threatening letters and was spat on when visiting the factory with journalist Kerstin Berlman while investigating the case (Eriksson 2020). Some have assumed that Monica has made significant sums of money from speaking to the press and continuously working on the case, but to her standing up and resisting has never been about getting attention or gaining financially. Nevertheless, Monica has stated that her activism, especially in the early years, has felt like a job (Capuder 2015; Anjou 2003). Years later, in 2003, Monica received an environmental award for her decades long tireless activism (Anjou 2003). Through Monica’s story we can observe how standing up and being closely engaged in the events has been draining and difficult, but a sense of duty has driven her to pursue justice. Being personally affected and frightened for her son, witnessing others close-by suffering, being badly treated and belittled, as well as becoming to a degree a ‘public persona’ have all been part of her experience, in good and in bad. Monica has stated, that despite it all, she would go through it again.

6.2. After the Scandal Remediation of the BT Kemi site has been a decades long journey. A clean-up process was started as early as 1978, led by the County Administrative Board (CAB) and by the Swedish Environmen- tal Research Institute (IVL). The old factory was demolished, its remains dumped to a designated waste area between railroads and drainage water was first treated with active carbon on site and then pumped into a sewage treatment plant in Landskrona in 1982 (Bevmo 2006). Despite these efforts and the scrutiny of the remediation process, the soil was still found to be strongly contaminated according to multiple studies conducted between 1983-1998. Additionally, significant amounts of dinoseb - the herbicide produced in the factory, was found from the soil under newly built industrial buildings (idem.). Plans for the continuation of the remediation process were on hold for a few years until in 2002 the Svalöv municipality took responsibility for its finalisation. According to the 2006 municipality “environmental reclaiming” project plan for the BT Kemi site, the goals were to create an area without danger, take the concerned site into active use, be an example for similar cases of remediation in the future, and become a valuable collaborator for scientific research (Bevmo 2006). Additionally, the ambition to change the general perception of Teckomatorp from a toxic site solely associated with BT Kemi to a more neutral residential town was mentioned as a goal (idem.). In 2003, at the start of this second part of remediation, Monica Nilsson was interviewed for Helsingborgs Dagblad and in it she discusses the resurfaced familiar phenol smell resulting from the soil having been dug up once again (Anjou 2003). For her, there was no mistaking the smell, which had haunted the town for years and was one of the initial indi- cators of the environmental crime that had been committed. The smell not just for Monica but also for other residents is a ghost, one which is known and immediately recognised by locals who experienced the first stages of the contamination. In the interview almost two decades ago, Monica expressed her disappointment towards the municipality’s poor efforts in attending to the clean-up until that point (idem.). Simultaneously, however, she was hopeful about the re-started remediation and the attention which was given to the issue. As we shall see later, the remediation is still on- going in 2020, although finally the project is close to its end. The process has been long and ardu- ous, leaving locals exhausted after over four decades of discussing measures and ways of dealing with the issue. As mentioned earlier when discussing Monica’s experiences and her spotlight in media, the Teckomatorp case received notable attention from the news media when the scandal was first revealed, and it has stayed in headlines sporadically but persistently over the years. In academic context, Teckomatorp has been studied and analysed intensely due to the notoriety of the toxic

44 scandal and its importance for Swedish legislation. However, most of the articles written about the case have been instrumental. Several studies have been carried out with measuring the amounts of toxics remaining in the soil and waters, while others have focused on the health effects, such as following pregnancies and children in the area, particularly soon after the contamination was revealed (Fiskesjö 1985; Forsberg & Nordström 1985). Additionally, there has been some research focusing on BT Kemi case’s impact on economic value of the land as well as technical possibilities of recycling toxic matter and clean up strategies (Norrman et al. 2020; Van Praagh & Modin 2016). The impact of the scandal on environmental legislation and administration is another topic, which has been discussed and parallels to Seveso industrial disaster case in Italy in 1976 have been made (Mårald 2010). The Italian case affected a larger population and impacted an EU directive about industrial safety regulations, which became to be known as the Seveso II Directive. In Seveso, six metric tons of toxic gas was released to a residential area from a chemical factory leading quickly to small animals dying in the area and in a few days’ time severe symptoms started to manifest in local residents. Due to the delay in symptoms, the official reaction to the catastrophe was slow and the town was not evacuated until several days after the warning signs had started to appear. This lack of fast and effective action was later criticised, and it made visible the need for putting in place guidelines for such emergencies. As a result, the Seveso disaster’s legacy is strongly visible in strict regulations concerning hazardous materials and their storing within the European Union (Hakkinen 2005). The Teckomatorp case had a similar legacy, something good coming from a tragic event. Admittedly, the Swedish case affected fewer people and impacted regulations on a smaller scale, but nevertheless national legislation was complemented and improved, surely giving some sense of accomplishment and justice to the people having suffered from the company’s misconducts. In addition to these more instrumental and administrational themes, some research papers have also focused on Teckomatorp’s landscape and heritage, which becomes interesting in terms of the discussion I have concentrated on earlier around toxic heritage and trauma (Chapters 2.4 and 3.3). A paper by Lundberg et al. (2016) discusses the relationship between cultural heritage management and regional development. They introduce the concept of heritagepreneurship, which combines safeguarding local cultural heritage all the while harnessing it for regional development plans in hope of economic and non-economic profit (Lundberg et al. 2016). Similarly to the discussion earlier in relation to bad heritage (Chapter 2.2.), Lundberg et al. (2016) engage in a discussion on the problematics of contradictory landscapes with dark pasts, which still play an important part in the region’s history and should be remembered even if there is a will to rebrand the place. Inter- estingly, Lundberg et al. (2016) conclude that Teckomatorp’s toxic history is seen to have been incorporated in the identity of the place and affecting heritage management in such a strong manner that, contrary to other towns in Sweden, the conservation of old factory buildings was not considered necessary. The memory lives on in the narrative of the town as well as in the nearly finished remediation project and reclaiming of the landscape. A park created at the site as well as other repurposing of the landscape have been seen as successful measures of moving on while not attempting to hide or forget the past (idem.).

6.3. A Scarred Landscape Although more than four decades have passed since the BT Kemi scandal first took place, toxicity is still very much part of Teckomatorp’s identity, and the present-day town remains a scarred landscape. The Svalöv municipality conducted a survey in 2009, which revealed that 78% of the Skåne region’s residents still, thirty years after the first remediation process, associated Teckomatorp with contamination and the past environmental catastrophe (Norborg 2009). In this last section, I will discuss some current ideas of the town’s past and present and analyse ways of treating the past through a few related projects in the town. The aftermath of contamination in Teckomatorp has been troublesome, long, riddled by bad news, and it is still on-going. While, according to 45 officials and researchers, the history with BT Kemi has been recognised as part of the town’s heritage, residents’ thoughts do not necessarily align with this view. Hearing some comments on the topic from local people gives insights into living in an everyday landscape with a dark past and helps us understand how that heritage moulds their view of the town. Some local voices and thoughts can be found in Norrman et al.’s (2020) survey with residents of Teckomatorp. As there has been an increasing interest in sustainable and inclusive remediation processes, their research focuses on gathering information about people’s experiences and perceptions of a such more inclusive approach to remediation. At the end of the questionnaire participants were able to leave free commentary and express any additional thoughts about the project and generally about living in Teckomatorp. Here we find some interesting quotes, such as: “far more is needed than remediation of the Southern Section to enhance the attractiveness. Drive along the main street through the village and observe a level of misery that goes way beyond the norm” (Norrman et al. 2020, 11). This comment is interesting because of the mentioned experience of the atmosphere in the town and the implication of the contamination’s effects running much deeper than what is recoverable through a clean-up process. This can be read as an interpretation of the landscape as scarred and the relationship of the individual and the environment as significantly changed due to the multiple levels of trauma left behind. On the other hand, another comment stated simply that when the remediation process is finished “a very sad story will finally be brought to a close”, implying a capability and willingness to leave the contamination in the past without seeing it as a constitutive and entirely inseparable part of the individual’s relationship with the landscape (Norrman et al. 2020, 11). These two selected examples from Norrman et al.’s (2020) questionnaire show once again that the perception of a place is individual as are the attitudes and hopes regarding the future of the town. In the next chapter, I will give a broader look into the topic of individual experiences, but it is important to recognise here that even a ‘successful’ remediation will be experienced and interpreted in many ways. Another insight into the experiences and narratives can be found from a project started approximately a decade ago. In 2009, a proposal of a local scandal museum focusing on the BT Kemi case was introduced by a local group focusing on the remediation process. The small museum finally opened in June 2017 and according to the municipality’s website, the exhibition contains information on the unfolding of the scandal, impacts of the chemicals on the Braå river, people’s health, and legislation in Sweden (Svensson 2019). The main theme of the exhibition is the site’s transformation from a scene of environmental scandal to a beautiful nature area. This is a familiar narrative for a clean-up project, as I have already discussed earlier in relation to Superfund sites in the US (Chapter 3.6.). However, Teckomatorp differs from the Superfund sites as it is still pre- dominantly used as a residential area and only the factory grounds and areas most affected by toxics have been transformed into park areas. The exhibition is designed to be child-friendly and has an educational approach, verbally retelling the steps and stages of the scandal but also illustrating it. Monica Nilsson’s story is also present at the exhibition with a photograph of her and her son in front of the factory gates. The exhibition, and its educational approach sum up well the general narrative around Teckomatorp. BT Kemi’s irresponsible conduct and the consequent contamination were a tragedy still impacting the landscape and manifesting in the town, but it has simultaneously been a learning process. In the narrative of the exhibition the entire scandal and its aftermath have been translated into a narrative, which focuses on the positive outcomes and unique opportunities offered through learning from experience. The development of environmental legislation, valuable lessons on chemicals and their impacts on the environment and human health, application and recalibration of remediation techniques, evaluation of appropriate ways of retelling the story and conserving the heritage, and perhaps even recognition of the power of activism and social movements. I see these themes as forms of “a learning curve” narrative. Some of it is tinted perhaps with a hint of irony, such as the display of a ‘pioneering’ remediation process, which to date has taken over four decades and has been shadowed by many stakeholders’ avoidance of taking responsibility over its execution. Even though there are indeed many constructive sides to

46 this kind of optimistic and to a degree transparent public narrative, I still see there to be a lack of discussion on the personal and the cultural. The implications the experience has had on the town’s people as well as the direct and indirect victims of the contamination is not really brought up. That is also why zooming in on Monica’s interviews and statements on her experience here gives valuable complementing information on the experienced and continuously changing scarred landscape in Teckomatorp. Another medium of discussion I see as fitting to this narrative approach of educational experience is a social media account on Instagram, created in 2013, dedicated to documenting and sharing the different stages and progress of the BT Kemi site’s remediation to the community. In July 2020, a photo of a sign next to the remediation site saying ”Här går BT Kemi-skandalen mot sitt slut” (translation: this is where the BT Kemi scandal comes to an end) was posted on the account along with previous posts of the remediation site and on-going construction work (btkemi 2020). This is a way of creating more transparency and also letting the community engage in the project, aligning with the aims of (socially) sustainable new remediation techniques. Social media is an approach- able and easily accessible medium of communication and does thus present a suitable opportunity for diffusion of information while I also see it as a contribution to building a positive public image for the municipality. Updating and disclosing information regularly even though in an informal way, can be seen as a responsible action helping the municipality gain the public’s trust, at least regarding the project and its advancing. As seen in this chapter, the narratives around Teckomatorp as contaminated are for a large part instrumental and revolve around remediation processes, branding strategies, and academic research. Even ‘cultural’ ways of narrating, such as the BT Kemi exhibition, is focused on the specific steps and stages of the contamination and remediation instead of more descriptive retelling of the implications the case had on the town and its people. The above discussed social media account and the recently opened educational scandal museum are both part of maintaining the toxic heritage of the town in the present-day narratives of the landscape. However, the landscape is much more than its past contamination and as Monica states casually in an interview in 2020, after all and with everything taken into account Teckomatorp is a good to place to live in (Eriksson 2020). To her, Teckomatorp has similar issues and problems as other small towns, such as a need to attract more young people to stay vibrant, but in order to do that the town needs to have industries and activities that bring those people in (idem.). In this manner, Monica gives a better understanding of what living in Teckomatorp as a scarred landscape means to her personally. This is valuable because our human experiences and perceptions are made of our ways of understanding, interaction with others and the environment, as well as previous knowledge of the landscape. Thus sharing one’s experience encompasses much more than it may initially seem. In the next chapter I will elaborate on this train of thought as I will look into counter-hegemonic storytelling of human experience and personal perceptions of the toxic world.

7. Remediation through narrative: The Toxic Bios project

“Counter-hegemonic narratives have been instrumental in the construction of alternative regimes of truth, legitimisation of knowledge, and potentially, liberation – thus we should aim at uncovering those counter-narratives of resistance to environmental destruction that can be found in individual and collective memories, social movements’ self-representation, fiction and non-fiction literatures and other forms of creative expression related to issues of environmental (in)justice.” (Barca 2014, 543.)

Thus far in this thesis, I have highlighted the importance of understanding individual experience and listening to human stories of environmental injustice alongside larger-scale representations and narratives. As we have seen in previous chapters, stories of real-life situations of injustice have been told through news articles and other media, like documentaries but also art. These kinds of representations do bring people’s stories and struggles to wider consciousness and are key in spreading awareness - sometimes even prompting action for a good cause. However, these representations are often shared through a medium, which allows few to express themselves, and only through a certain vision, for example, that of a documentary’s director or the artist. The creation of platforms which allow anyone to share their experiences and stories in a format which suits them is relatively new, enabled by the internet and increasing access to it. In this chapter, I will present the Toxic Bios project – a so called “guerrilla narrative” project by KTH’s Environmental Humanities Laboratory, which was started in 2017 and is run by Marco Armiero and Ilenia Iengo in Stockholm. The on-going project was inspired by the more widely known Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas) and it collects stories from people who have had varying encounters with toxicity in their surroundings. However, as opposed to EJAtlas, which focuses on places, Toxic Bios focuses also on the “lives, bodies and memories of people” (Undisciplined environments 2017). It is a relevant project to bring up as its exploration will indeed shine light on the way toxicity is discussed from the point of view of individuals, in terms of social impact but also resistance as we have already been given some glimpses of in the previous chapter. The analysis of this Toxic Bios project and the ideas behind it helps bring together many of the previously discussed themes of this thesis. Representation and expression of one’s relationship with a toxic landscape, a manifold and inclusive representation of voices, dealing and making sense of the trauma connected to environmental contamination as well as recognition of the many ways in which these narratives can be expressed.

7.1. Space for counter-hegemony The quote from Stephania Barca (2014) that introduced this chapter summarises well the thinking behind the Toxic Bios stories as resistance narratives. Before going into the details and presenting the project, I will discuss here some aspects which make storytelling so important. Sharing stories and allowing people to have a platform for voicing their experiences is a direct way of

Fig. 3. A screenshot of the Toxic Bios frontpage showing a map of Europe with the locations of stories collected and published so far on the website (toxicbios.eu 2020). adding to the discourse on toxicity. This is important because storytelling can be a way of coping in disempowering circumstances (see Jackson 2002). Maintaining one’s agency and sense of place in the world when it seems that these have been taken away, and shaping the experience through reformulating and retelling it, helps in holding on to one’s identity. However, most of the time it is difficult for one’s voice to be heard, even on a smaller scale. Barca (2014) writes of narrative violence, which includes “silencing crucial information, hiding evidence, suppressing stories”, but also ignoring and not searching for the real impacts experienced somewhere, which have not yet reached others. I see the Toxic Bios project particularly as tending to the latter part: digging up experiences and perceptions which might not be known by anyone else than the person sharing the story of their encounter with toxicity in some. It is one thing to know about the contamination of a certain landscape and the scientific or economic facts connected to it, but to let those who have been affected by it be heard gives a deeper understanding of the toxic world we share as humans. The Toxic Bios project is an insightful example of how stories and experiences have begun to be more valued in interdisciplinary academia and how subjective and free-formed narratives are seen as part of bigger entities. I see there to be a link between this type of inclusive storytelling as well as sharing and what Chantal Mouffe (1999) calls agonistic pluralism. The concept as defined by Mouffe (1999) is not necessarily entirely applicable to the context of storytelling as such, as it deals with simultaneous plurality of differing voices within a society to create a stronger democracy. Nevertheless, I believe agonistic pluralism when slightly modified may give an insightful angle to the study of storytelling. Here, I am seeing the existence of stories, which do not necessarily need to be contradicting, but rather complementing, contributing to making societies more aware, and to an extent more equal. By allowing these stories to be told and exist in a realm accessible to anyone, it not only increases environmental justice but also contributes to agonistic pluralism. I argue that the voice of someone generally unheard having been made public and distributed is agonism, as usually we only face curated voices, fitting to someone’s agenda. So, the topic here is not solely about that which is personal coming through, but it is also about broader democratic systems which are profiting from widely spread storytelling. Similarly to the ‘counter-hegemony’ Barca (2014) sees in narratives, Mouffe (1999) calls for resistance of hegemony within society.

7.2 Stories of agency The aims of Toxic Bios stated on the project’s website are to create new ways of collaborating within scientific research, bring forth “counter-hegemonic storytelling” and empower grass-roots activism (Undisciplined environments 2017). The framework given on the web platform for sharing one’s story is very broad. Videos, drawings, poems, texts, photos, or audio recordings have all been encouraged and listed as acceptable forms of giving a glimpse into the subjective world of experiencing toxicity. The project’s online platform12 gathers the stories on a map and in April 2020, the site had a total of 30 stories, all located in Europe - including also Teckomatorp and Monica’s story discussed in Chapter 6. The biggest number of stories per country is in Portugal, featuring contamination stories having to do with pesticides, GMOs, and industrial activities in northern parts of the country, and several stories of environmental activism dealing with nuclear power plants and GMOs in the south. The stories on the map appear in clusters over some hotspots, which has been stated to be due to the fact that Toxic Bios has partners in specific cities in Europe. Consequently these cities are the places that are the most accessible in terms of reaching out and gathering stories from people and having the workforce to upload them on the website. However, as already mentioned, the project is on-going, and there is a total of 70 stories collected of which majority is yet to be published. The genre of these narratives, is described by the project initiators as toxic autobiographies, using the concept of Richard Newman (2012). Newman (2012, 22) describes the genre as being “[l]ess concerned with natural landscapes or wildlife preservation than previous generation of environmental works, toxic autobiography meditates on the personal, political, and historical meanings of the hazardous waste grid […]”. Toxic autobiographies have been a growing trend in the US during the past few decades but have so far remained relatively unpopular in Europe. Considering that Toxic Bios is an academic project, it is unusually accessible and open to everyone. The initiators of the project are also engaging in a discussion on ways of knowing and how mundane everyday signs telling people that something is not as it should be in their environment are worth gathering, especially since this kind of knowledge is not recognised nor documented by companies or institutions (Armiero et al. 2019). The instructions, or rather suggestions, on how to tell one’s story, propose to tell about one’s experiences through senses, such as smells and visible changes in the landscape or other everyday life aspects of dealing with the toxicity. Small discreet signs of contamination that might have been ignored at the time of occurrence, and so on. When looking through the stories and the forms of expression used in them, many have decided to share their story through video, some showing their faces while others preferring to stay anonymous. There are a few audio files with photographs and some written accounts. An example of a written narrative paired with photos is a story of a woman called Federica from Brescia, Italy whose city had a PCB chemical industry affecting people’s lives (Toxic Bios 2020). She starts her story with retelling her medical journey and sickness from finding out she had a tumour up until going through a mastectomy surgery. She tells how she felt scared and confused and how her family supported her while also being frightened themselves. During her sickness, Federica heard of the environmental contamination of the Brescia region and of how many women had become ill in the region. Federica writes that she wanted to transform her pain and suffering into something useful for the society and she decided to share her story through a photography project, Terra Ferita (the Wounded Soil), with the help of her friend, Stefania. The women wanted to express their anger and make a difference, give faces to the people directly and indirectly suffering from the toxicity in their environment. They photographed eight affected women in front of sites representing contamination and displayed their work later in an exhibition. Federica and Stefania hope that their contribution helps in creating a positive change and a more attentive world. This story

12 www.toxicbios.eu 50 published on the website differs from the narratives I discussed in relation to films and documentaries in Chapter 5. Here the details of the contamination itself,

Fig. 4. A screenshot of Federica’s story on Toxic Bios web platform picturing a woman intensively looking into the camera in front of a wall reading ‘Caffaro’, the name of the factory in Brescia producing PCB chemicals. The words on her arms apri gli ochhi translate to ‘open your eyes’. meaning information on the company, severity of the situation in scientific terms or dramatic legal battles are secondary to the personal experience of Federica and to her way of resisting against the intrusion of toxicity in her life and in the life of other women with similar experiences. The story is personal and not restricted by any predefined narrative structure, creating a much closer and realistic feeling of what it might mean to a person to have to live with toxicity. Another Toxic Bio story I find relevant as an example is written by Hakan Dedeoglu who lives in the Kirklareli region in Turkey. Hakan has composed a text on his personal journey and thoughts on the pollution issues around his home landscape. The Dedeoglu family have been witnesses of the region’s contamination, especially the Ergene river, during the past decades. According to Hakan, the root of the problem was in the politics and ignorance concerning issues of the region’s industrial practices in the 1970s. Hakan as an activist has been participating in local environmental movements to increase awareness of the issues on local level as well as bringing the issue to discussion in the Turkish parliament. However, despite many successes the pursuit of environmental and social justice has proven to be rocky as powerful economic interests have kept working against the interests of environmental movements. The historically significant land in Kirklareli has been known to be fertile for centuries, but since the harmful activities began the landscape has changed significantly. Hakan recounts how he and his late wife placed special importance in community involvement and stressed the importance of changing the mentality around industrial practices. (Dedeoglu 2020.) Similarly to Federica’s story above, Hakan’s toxic autobiography focuses on not the specific harms done to the environment, but rather on his continuous personal struggle to make a difference and the role education has played in it. Also, as he talks of the changes in the landscape’s historical characteristics and identity as providing fertile soil for agriculture, he gives a glimpse into the shock and disconnect it creates when a landscape becomes unrecognisable in terms of a shared narrative. This links again to the concept of trauma discussed earlier and the difficult relationship one may have with a changing landscape. The final example I am bringing up from the 30 stories that are currently posted online is by Father Yannis Oikonomidis’s story concerning environmental degradation in central Greece, particularly 51 the pollution of the Asopos river and, consequently, the contamination of the local drinking water. This story on the website consists of an almost hour-long video with Oikonomidis, featuring him discussing the issue in Greek accompanied by illustrative maps and photos. There is also a summarised written version in English, and this text is what I am basing most of my analysis on. This story comes from the point of view of a priest, a central community figure who became vital in the fight for disclosure in the environmental crimes committed by local industries. Oikonomidis describes the different efforts it took to get attention to the case and finding out about the harmful impacts the pollution was having on both the environment and the people living in the area. He collaborated with a biochemical engineer to first demand for “formal and accurate” data on local water quality from the companies, then proving the data to be inaccurate, conducting new reliable tests, proving a connection between the environmental damage and health issues in local population and finally trying to convince media, local industry workers, and heads of church of these struggles to be able to take the case further. As a priest, his experience has not only been about ensuring justice to people and the environment, but it has also been intertwined with thoughts and questions of ethics - of what is good and acceptable. Interestingly, he links his story to a personal discussion on the shift in his own definition of ethics. Oikonomidis states that in the past, ethical behaviour for him has been that which was defined as good by one’s family, religion, and community, but now there is also the environment to consider. In this case with Father Oikonomidis’ story, there is an interesting surfacing aspect of faith and a diverging contextualisation of the story. The way he constructs his story and the details of his fight for justice resembles more the narrative we saw in, for example, the documentary Jozi Gold (2019) (see Chapter 5.4.) than the two previous examples, but because this is his personal story and journey he also adds ideas related to faith and his own world view. That is again why taking part of these individual stories is insightful. They may have some of the same characteristics as larger scale narratives, but they also allow people to bring up other topics and themes they see as interrelated or relevant from their personal world of beliefs and perspective. The stories I have summarised are all in themselves multi-layered and bring attention to details that might have been missed, and connections between everyday life and toxicity that would not necessarily have surfaced otherwise. Federica, Hakan, and Father Oikonomidis are all agents and activists in their own ways, so in addition to experiencing and living with toxicity they have actively engaged in discussions around contamination issues. The project’s acceptance of various forms of self-expression is also a way of appreciating a multitude of ways of trying to convey understandings of the world. Not everyone finds a straight-forward written account to be the most impactful way of transmitting one’s message. It may well be that drawings, photos or poems allow for a better interpretation of one’s feelings, memories, and experiences. Most stories on the website rely on the more conventional forms such as written autobiographies, videos or audio recordings in which the person tells their story, but there are examples, such as Federica’s account which is accompanied by a few of the photographs presented at her exhibition. Some stories approach the task from the point of view of ‘toxic autobiography’ as described by Newman (2012) earlier, telling one’s relationship and familial connections to a landscape from a longer time period and of the meaning the place has for the person’s identity on a level surpassing its toxic nature. Others approach it more from a project- and solely toxic-oriented point of view, focusing on the details and stages of an administrative battle. This shows us that allowing for a free expression of one’s experiences enriches the narrative horizon as there are varying ways of perceiving and retelling toxicity.

7.3 A crossroads of toxic discussion The mode of representing toxic landscapes shown here, in the form of Toxic Bios, puts focus on the intentional and the subjective aspect of narrative creation. If some of the other forms I have been discussing along the way (Chapter 4.4; 5.1) have been less assertive in their aim of representing toxicity, the above accounts of individual experiences are explicitly gathered together to create 52 a collection of the many types of agencies and perceptions having to do with facing toxicity. With this final case study and also final chapter of this thesis, by introducing Toxic Bios, a project encouraging and allowing all individuals to share their toxic stories through a multitude of expres- sive forms, I have brought my exploration almost to an end. This example encompasses most of the central themes I have explored in this thesis. The voices presented on the website are all expressing subjective perceptions and stories, participating in narrating landscapes, unloading feelings of frustration, hope, trauma, and loss resulting from facing a toxic environment, utilising a multitude of forms to narrate (photography, art, oral retelling, writing etc.) all while gathered in an academic platform contributing to research attempting to understand toxicity and bring forth environmental justice. Learning about individuals and their stories, empathising with them while also recognising the work they have done through activism is a way of coming closer to understanding how toxic landscapes are experienced, perceived, and thus narrated. I will now move on to the final discussion where I will unpack the findings encountered during this explorative journey in narratives.

8. The unknown destination

Ghosts of the past are all around us - imprinted in the landscapes in which we live our lives. By awakening our senses, we can see, feel, smell, and hear them. Increasingly often, these ghosts are reminders of a toxic past, ominous hints of our new existence in a scarred world. Sometimes the ghosts are subtle and barely noticeable while at others they are offensively interrupting our daily activities. Toxicity can be experienced in as many ways as there are individuals and this makes exploring toxic narratives an endless journey. There are many physical and psychological effects resulting from coming to contact with toxicity and structural injustices, which sometimes lie behind these encounters. However, what I have also found during the exploration in this thesis, is that surprisingly beauty, belonging, and hope can be found in places, which have been severely altered by toxicity. The sickness, ugliness, injustice, and scariness have not disappeared, but they are not all that exists either. Many landscapes are loved by their past and present residents despite their dark heritage as we have seen, for example, with the case of Teckomatorp and Monica, the exiled people of the Bikini Atoll, or several of the Toxic Bios stories recounted in Chapter 7. Yet, this multiplicity of emotions and perceptions is difficult to represent as there are countless storylines, branches of research, and layers of a landscape to uncover. In Chapter 3, some of these were brought up from instrumental narrations to discussion on waste production, remediation, landscape memories, ecological characteristics, and dark tourism. Exploration of these varying focal points of research reveals the near impossibility of gaining an understanding of toxicity in a holistic and all-encompassing way. But attempting it regardless is important as it helps us see connections in these seemingly separate fields. In Chapters 4 and 5, I have touched upon art and toxicity. I consider the arts to be a valuable medium of understanding the human views on the landscapes of Anthropocene because they not only allow the artists themselves to express their worldview and experience, but they also offer the public a chance to reflect on their personal experiences, through interpretation. Toxicity as a topic fits well for artistic forms of expression as it often cannot be directly visualised. Thus the interpre- tational quality of artistic endeavours allows and encourages making connections between many sectors of life. Consequently, the depiction of toxicity through art is often already creating webs of meaning and bridging artificial boundaries. Academia and research give us tools in the form of concepts and instrumental data, which we can then combine with varying stories to become more knowledgeable about how larger societal issues, such as widely spread contaminants, affect real human lives in anthropogenic landscapes. Discussed examples such as Julian Charrière’s multimedia exhibition building on a narrative of a radioactive paradise, Chris Jordan’s (2015) photograph of bees as a commentary on the current global scale of pesticide use, documentaries such as Jozi Gold (2019) combining administrational struggles with social injustices, health problems, and environmental degradation, and finally the Toxic Bios project are all taking part in this, combining disciplines and approaches to create more multifaceted understandings of toxicity. This to me is enriching and creates alternative ways of knowledge generation. Furthermore, through discussion on the heritage of toxicity we can start to understand the temporal layers of contaminated landscapes. Not only the events of the past, but also how the past contamination continues to affect people, wildlife, and ecosystems near and far. I have introduced trauma as a concept assisting this discussion and exploration on the temporal webs of toxicity’s impacts. As we have seen, trauma exists in many forms. For instance, the case of radioactivity in the Bikini Atoll encompasses social trauma, landscape trauma, and perhaps even global trauma – all with different ways of manifesting but nevertheless intertwined. The challenge, however, lies in the dynamic between these different forms of experiences and how they are voiced with a balance considering ethicality and certain ‘rights’ to a narrative. There are often surprising contradictions

54 within scarred landscapes. Sometimes narratives, which initially appear contradictory are in fact unexpectedly complementary, such as the radioactive heritage of Bikini Atoll in combination with its welcoming waters for sharks and coral species. But at other times some narratives may exclude others and even execute oppressing power by silencing voices. For example, the mining history of Bolivia discussed in Chapter 3.4 shines light on such a situation where a nationally celebrated past has been experienced differently among the public and thus created narrative friction. This is where environmental justice, and tools enforcing it, become vital. Through the discussion on Monica’s story in the case of Teckomatorp and the exploration of stories in the Toxic Bios platform, we have merely scratched the surface of multitudinous stories telling what it means to come to face toxicity and sometimes also engage in activism due to the prevailing circumstances. For instance, with Monica and the case in Teckomatorp, the landscape’s contamination came to be a significant part of her life. She grew into activism in and through the scarred landscape she calls home with no previous intention or particular interest towards environmental activism. Narratives are constantly created, revised, contradicted, and enforced making their exploration a bountiful source of gaining knowledge of societies, science, history, the environment, and us humans. This thesis has been an exploration of how toxicity and scarred landscapes are perceived, discussed, and made sense of. Many landscapes have been only briefly mentioned without more in- depth discussion on their specific histories and characteristics, but they have all served as unique pieces of a mosaic forming a bigger picture. This is thus also an invitation for further adventures in narratives concerning anthropogenic landscapes. Through the application of concepts such as ghost, heritage, landscape, and trauma I have connected discussions on different platforms situated in academia, media, and art. I have discovered that there are many persistent storylines about contamination, stories featuring heroes and villains, narrative arches with a beginning and an end – but I have been delighted to also come across more varied representations. Stories of normal people, research recognising the transgenerational and subtle continuous impacts of contamination, boundary-crossing imaginations of a future in a toxic world, heart-breaking expressions of longing for a lost home, and stories of hope through activism in its many forms.

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