Before he left for the Dark Ecology Journey, Arie Altena contributed to Radio Web MACBA’S fourth episode in the OBJECTHOOD podcast series. This podcast is about objects, but more importantly, it is about some of the recent theories that offer new conceptualisations of objects in contemporary philosophy and art. In this episode, we go underground, but also under water, where development clashes with strange hyperobjects such as poison, where geology meets politics, where horror meets daily life.
Tower of the Kola Superdeep Borehole in September 2007. Photo by Andre Belozeroff, source
OBJECTHOOD #4 explores the slippery materiality of untraceable objects: from the arsenic poisoning the wells of Bangladesh as told by Nabil Ahmed, to Arie Altena's account of the superstition surrounding the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia, or the bizarre biology of the vampire squid from hell in a passage of Vilém Flusser’s ‘Vampyroteuthis Infernalis’ read by AGF.
Timeline
00:16 Introduction
08:48 Nabil Ahmed: Arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh
15:32 Forensic Architecture
17:13 Arsenic in the history of toxicology
23:36 The devil in the water
24:55 How arsenic poisoned the water
26:31 Perspectivism
29:42 A pharmakon par excellence
35:17 Arie Altena: The Kola Superdeep Borehole
39:07 Yuri Smirnov and the legacy of the Kola Superdeep
40:57 The well to hell myth
47:37 Excerpt of Vilém Flusser’s 'Vampyroteuthis Infernalis', read by AGF (Antye Greie-Ripatti)
Listen to OBJECTHOOD #4
here.
This podcast was curated by Roc Jiménez de Cisneros and produced for Radio Web MACBA in collaboration with Dark Ecology / Sonic Acts.
Arie Altena previously published the Field Notes article
Drilling Deep / Knowledge from Underground, find it
here.
