"How deep is deep, how long does love last?" How does a landscape 1000 years away from here respond to the Slow Violence processes of extractivism in the present? It's sandbanks have dissolved, the crabs have hidden in caves. Together with water, bacteria and algae, they turn rocks into soil. The sand has been "hijacked" on a large scale. Who cares about sand? Quartz sand, play sand, mining sand ... sand is found in the cement of the dwellings, and in the respiratory tracts of the inhabitants. The rain washes it back into the river. Sands are everywhere, and in zones of enormous heat - Sand can melt into glass. Environmental toxins diffuse into the sand, petrifying it into an island - no one dares move or touch it. But how do you turn contamination into compost? The sand, the crabs, the love and the violence do not stay permanently in landscapes believed to be foreign. Crabs have developed circuit boards and sensors, and used them to work their way through the cables and computing units on the desktop. Hundreds of rock drills incessantly send sediment data to the clouds. The earlier violence of mercury has been replaced, or better complemented, by the violence of AI-assisted mining algorithms that are once again exploring the area for minerals. Their machine learning is designed to prevent sand turbulence, vibration and flying rock. The sand disperses into the meshes of mining data and sticks together to form a second artificial skin.
Composting Slow Violence