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for i had heard – and it was not news
(2024 - 2025) Installation (3-channel video, ceramic vessels, porcelain kanisters, hazard blue vinyl/paint, steel)
These iterations of the work attempt to speculate at the convergence of containment, contamination, logistics, waste value, aid economies, inheritances, re- and dislocation.
In May 2021 a cargo ship arrived in the port of Wilhelmshaven, DE carrying 35 steelcore shipping containers filled with 700 tons of hazardous ‘waste’ material from the clean up of the port of Beirut, Lebanon in the wake of a disastrous explosion in August 2020. The clean up, contracted out to various firms in Bremen, DE, began in January 2021 — the contents of these containers, filled in Beirut, were emptied out and disposed of in Bremen.
The waste and I followed similar paths of movement and dislocation from Beirut to Bremen. I arrived ten months earlier than the cargo. At one point I wondered if maybe the residue or waste followed me. 700 Tons of toxic material and a body.
A body and its inheritance.
Installation Photos by Gabriela Valdespino (images 1,3,5 & 6) and Joya Bahkyi (images 2 & 4)
Curated by Julian Lautenbach for the exhibition what is that invisible thing your arm is resting on at Weserburg
Museum for Modern Art, Bremen DE 2025
you will not have read this
Text by Ashkan Sephavand
Catalog design by Virgil B/G Taylor
