This visualization says that toxics are often purposely rendered invisible through discourse and imaginaries around places.
This photo especially gets at silence and absence as forms of toxicity. Silence produces toxicity, as does absence. These toxicities actually continue to haunt the archive even today.
The artifact does not explicitly talk about toxcity, but the toxcities are implied through series of disruptive events of eviction, shooting, shut-downs, etc. in the region.
I am not entirely certain at this point, but it would appear that toxicity is complex when it comes to place and identity as impacted by environmental and social precarity. In addition, the manner in which toxicity is sometimes inescapable: even if one leaves a site that is toxic, one risks coming across other forms of toxicity in another place. Thus exposure to various forms of toxicities can at times be informed by choice. Or even if a site is toxic, one may not want to leave due to its significance in one's lifestyle.
The visualization and caption combination convey the notion that toxics can sometimes be relegated to the background, particularly when there are other more obviously precarious situations/toxicities occuring in its proximity. Toxicites at times can become everyday and "usual," indicating how people adapt to the toxicities and their effects whether intentionally or not. Perhaps one walks through the landscape and inhales the smoke, perhaps even questioning it, but at the same time that does not render the fire to someone a dramatic indication of danger and its potential to kill. In addition, there is a degree of uncertainty at times regarding who is responsible for toxicities--who caused it, who is responsible for addressing it, etc.
This image tells us that toxics are historical, contingent, socially-constructed. It also underscores thepoint the violent systems of oppression are circulated through signifiers of purity, innocence, and conviviality.
The visualization and caption demonstrate the extreme form of infrastructure required for the methanol production process, questioning the taken-for-granted nature of the entire supply chain, as well as the economies required to support this massive engineering feat.
I am interested in how collectives are described. A pride of lions, a crash of rhinos, a murder of crows.... This visualization untangles the multiple toxic environments at play some obvious, many hidden and unearthed through Oviya's critical insight. This visualization pushes us forward to think more critically, more imaginatively about how toxic environments inform and shape overlapping concerns in order to work, not for an imagined past, but to work for a complex, liveable future.
This visualization indexes climate change and political apathy. It is part of a larger photo essay which focuses on global urban coastal places as sites of toxicity. The cycle of flooding and drought in Chennai shape the image and commentary. This visualization is about the toxic politics that surrounds issues of governance and climate change within coastal communities.
This visualisation communicates something about different scales of toxicity: the concrete pollution that the petrochemical industry generates, but also the toxic political and economic dimensions of these global networks in a particular place.