Centre for Contemporary Nature

In this exhibition, Forensic Architecture’s Centre for Contemporary Nature presents two projects concerned with direct attacks on plants and vegetation, in the context of political conflict. One is a conflict at the threshold of the desert, the other at the threshold of the rainforest. Along the border fences of Gaza, Research Fellow Shourideh C. Molavi explores the effects of Israel’s use of herbicide on Palestinian farms, while in the forest frontiers of Colombia,Research Fellow Hannah Meszaros Martin investigates the military deployment of herbicide against coca plantations, and the resulting impact on the livelihood of local farmers.

Together, these two cases, thousands of miles apart, demonstrate the entanglement of human and environmental violence.

Left: Local chard (سلق) from east Gaza three days after herbicide spraying, 31.30.7N; 34.30.10E. Spraying by the Israeli military was conducted along the border on 3 December 2018. On 6 December 2018, samples were collected from Palestinian farms whose leafy crops showed visible damage from fungal pathogens, insect feeding and possible herbicide drift carried by the wind into Gaza. Original image: Shourideh C. Molavi with edits by Imani Jacqueline Brown, December 2018. ) Right: A fumigated plantain in Putumayo on 23 May 2015. This plantain grew on a pepper farm that was fumigated after the Colombian government agreed to suspend fumigations after the controversy around the WHO report naming glyphosate as a ‘probable carcinogen’. Original image: Federico Rios Escobar with edits by Hannah Meszaros Martin, May 2015.)

The use of herbicides in aerial fumigation first entered the repertoire of counter-insurgency tactics after WWII. The deployment of Agent Orange over Vietnam by the US Air Force is perhaps the most infamous example. Resistance movements in rural areas forced colonial and imperial powers to recognise the inextricable role of the environment in modern warfare.

In 1971, the agrochemical corporation Monsanto invented glyphosate, a broad-spectrum herbicide meant to dissipate in the soil.

Glyphosate came to Colombia in the context of the War on Drugs. Total eradication of the plants used to produce drugs was thought key to stopping the drug trade. However, the use of glyphosate cannot be disentangled from the ongoing context of the internal armed conflict, thus binding aerial fumigation to counter-insurgency.

In Palestine, the same herbicide has been deployed since 2014 by the Israeli military, to destroy vegetation along the eastern perimeter of the occupied Gaza Strip. Declared an extension of ongoing security operations in Gaza, the ‘desertification’ of a once lush and agriculturally active border zone has provided the Israeli army with the visibility to target civilians approaching the area with lethal force.

While their political contexts differ, the use of glyphosate in both Colombia and Palestine sustains an ongoing practice of counter-insurgency and repression by way of environmental destruction.

Images: Installation views, “Centre for Contemporary Nature”, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, photos by Bartosz Górka