(Archive) Permeance

To permeate, permeability, permeance: the action to diffuse through an entity

Permeance is a conceptual lens through which to approach the entanglements of earthly life. It implies an awareness of our participation in symbiotic relationships with Earth, dismantling our parasitic use of the environment and its forms of life. The impermeable membranes created by modernity deteriorate into a pile of compost which stimulates exchanges of substances, nutrients, molecules and microorganisms through principles of physics and chemical processes, as well as molecular exchanges and biological absorptions. The notion of permeability enables us to trace pollutants and understand the ruins we inhabit. This research indeed follows a history of pollution, which has been the ruination of both ecosystems and indigenous cultures. Unfortunately, too often we —in the West— are blinded by our perception that our actions are impermeable. Instead, permeating is only possible if we see beyond our limits: rivers flow between confines; histories of pollution can be displaced but not erased; contaminations can be absorbed but do not vanish; material histories can take you back to their geologies and along them stories of extractions and colonial violence emerge. Permeating unsilences.

The lowest common denominator

Situated between a scientific backdrop and artistic production, this research materializes through the medium of chromatographies, a form of sustainable, experimental, photosensitive compound separation method which visualises chemistries. By reducing the river ecosystem to sheer matter, and through a misuse of chromatography, we initiated a beyond-human communication between humans, soils, and all that composes ecosystems, on a macroscopic scale and in wavelengths visible to human eyes. The photographic image reveals the chemical composition of the Earth’s compounds as well as its pollutants. Manifesting as an act of beyond-human communication, the chromatographic colors and patterns indicate a history of industrial contamination, present and visible in the river, its soils, and its ecosystems. Through the ontology of permeance, the chromatographic indices also become representative of colonization, land expropriation and mining extractivism across the globe.
Permeance is a past and present story of contaminations, which wishes to question our relations in the environment and stimulate thinking beyond modern, isolated and impenetrable divides.

We contaminate through mutualistic encounters.

The chromatographies and the theoretical description of 'Permeance' in the zine are complemented by an audiovisual narration, which merges the visualisations of contaminated earths together with industrial soundscapes, encouraging a permeable understanding of our being in symbiotic relationships with Earthly matter.

The video essay was realised in collaboration with Tine Theré.