Tim Schütz VtP Focus

I am interested in thinking about the expansion of Taiwanese petrochemical manufacturer Formosa Plastics from a visual perspective. The company operates globally and is implicated in different issues: in Kaohsiung, a group of STS scholars is pushing back against the expansion of a naphtha cracker complex; in Texas, activists recently achieved a historic settlement of $50 million to mitigate plastic pollution; in Louisiana’s “cancer alley”, the company is successfully collecting pollution permits to construct a new $9.4bn plastic plant. The literal places that Formosa inhabits – or plans to inhabit – are toxic for obvious reasons. All three places have a significant toxic chemical load. In Kaohsiung, the industrial infrastructure is aging and not well documented. Then, there is also China’s digital misinformation campaign leading up to the recently held Taiwanese elections, including the results that could increase pressure from Beijing. Both are certainly significant for Formosa’s global relations – and might include forms of toxicity that could be visualized and ‘placed’ further. Southeast Texas is a hotspot (explosion in Port Neches, 2019), but the cleanup money promises remediation and a check on the companies’ future pollution. In Lousiana, activists highlight that the new facility is known to be located on two slave burial grounds.  For the project, it might also be interesting to think about how to visualize a globally operating company, linking theoretical approaches about the ‘scalar’ or ‘multisited’ dimension of ethnography with the visual. Certainly, there is a lot of use of visuals by activists (photographs, maps, …) to be studied across place, and in regards to place.