These Relations are Forever weaves together agricultural policy, toxicology, water quality research, environmental law, and art around the common theme of chemical pollution. The scientific practices of four women researchers are conveyed and re-imagined following the thread of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDC’s), which permeate food, soil, and water, and are increasingly more persistent and everlasting in daily lives.

The four screens form a space across which the collaboratively created rituals are performed. The women communicate, stepping up at key moments to symbolically take part in each of the four rituals, showing support across time and space. In these rituals, methods from dominant scientific practices are woven together with spoken text, movement and symbolic locations and objects. Here ritual is used as a tool to create a moment outside of everyday life, to slow down, be present and show gratitude and to acknowledge the alterations chemicals make to bodies and ecosystems.

Jemma Woolmore | Caterina Cacciatori, Sandra Coecke, Irene Guerrero Fernández & Saskia Vermeylen

Image by: Jemma Woolmore.