Given the situation described in the caption, I actually like how the toxicity at issue is not immediately intelligible. It parallels the fact that the actual toxicity of the ferns simply cannot be known without further inspection.
The visualization reveals the contradictions between image and reality. The image excludes toxicity, history, and even the physical situation of the proposed development. The caption indicates nuance--public reaction isn't limited to resistance to low-income housing, or to housing atop a toxic site. The short-sightedness of simply testing for carcinogens makes me curious about the different gradations of opposition to the project. The contested futures of toxic sites reveals much about how we think about place, and the boundaries between our bodies and the landscape.
I would like some elaboration of the second passage. Will the future of the plan be changed depending on the results of carcinogen testing? What is the difference between the EPA's or OSHA's permissible levels of carcinogens and what is actually safe, and for whom, and how do we know? How does class fit into the opposition to the project? What other sites in Pasadena have been slated for low-income housing (if any), and what did opposition to those plans look like (if any)?
This is a found image, an architect's rendering of the proposed project. As the caption points out, select aspects of the site have been deliberately omitted, while certain have been emphasized. This image could just as easily be in a mountain resort town as next to a freeway. The image is populated by members of the leisure class enjoying the outdoor amenities. An older couple in matching khakis strolls, children run through the grass holding hands, and women picnic. Most people are white, though not all of them. Groups of migrating birds fly overhead.
This image is overwhelmingly rich as it is. It is an artifact revealing attitudes about imaginary ideals and I feel it would be inappropriate to do anything to alter it. It's important to leave it as the architecture firm intended.
This visualization reinforces the notion that much of humanity doesn't view itself as part of nature, that we think what we put in the ground can't hurt us, that we somehow believe in an impenetrable barrier between ourselves and the physical environment. Or, perhaps, it's more sinister than that- lower income neighborhoods are exposed to toxicity at much higher rates than affluent ones through siting of industry and disposal. This is the same process, but in reverse, bringing the people to the toxicity instead of toxicity to the people.
The problematization of “enclosure” and “containment” that I think is implicit in some of the theory you cite is extremely interesting. You say that toxicity is produced by the desire to control or keep “matter in place”, citing Mary Douglas—the chemicals meant to preserve the body from pollution themselves cannot be contained.
I find myself wanting to know where this is, the name of the cemetery. What geographical or climatic features make it necessary to use a vault, or is this considered a common/universal practice to ward off water, bacteria, and animal infiltration? What makes alternatives to containment in burial practices unthinkable or unfeasible? Why does the market for vault construction or manufacturing expensive chemicals destined to fail persevere? Who profits from keeping these practices fixed so firmly in place?
I love all the different materials we can see in the frame: the iron, the stone, the vegetation. I find myself wanting to know where this is, the name of the cemetery.
This image is striking in making us look differently at what for most of us is probably a familiar type of landscaping, a cemetary/gravestone--the image invites us to see an ecosystem that exists in some kind of tension with the designed compartmentalization of space. The caption draws out more exactly the terms of this tension, the uneasiness of how the chemicals the living choose for the dead are toxic in ways we seem to willfully obfuscate or distance ourselves from with burial architecture and practices.
