Contaminated Bodies
✨✨✨(っ◔︣◡◔᷅)っc(◕︣◡◕᷅c)✨✨✨This text is an attempt by me, Chloe Janssens, to map out the field of my interests & struggles through writing. In the form of a journey, I have tried to connect several sites that keep emerging through my process of art making. Thank you Constant for initiating this excercise. ✨✨✨(っ◔︣◡◔᷅)っc(◕︣◡◕᷅c)✨✨✨
It takes a whole lot of courage to turn your back to someone you love, and leave. But C. was facing the open, tired mouth of the mountain they loved and knew there was not the slightest chance of recovery. “Bloody fucking Umicore Twats,” they sissed between angry lips. Knowing the mountains fate, C. held them, sharing a rich and deep sorrow that made their empty stomachs howl in resonance. Shaking and stirring anger that inhabits so many empty stomachs. “I will take your memory with me”, the dying mountain replied as C. stepped away into a small cargoship that was waiting for them in the harbour.
Where is C.?
C. just left the Congo river and the ship is now entering the Atlantic ocean. On their right they see Banana Point. Between the ship and the banks there are cargoships, motorboats weighed down by smuggled petrol and fishermen’s wooden canoes. On the left; a vast, open water with on its horizon an orange flame flickering and producing a giant, grey cloud of smoke above the land and waters of Angola. Behind, they hear the mountain imploding with a loud roar. Taking C’s memory to compost and rot in the belly of this planet. Below, in the belly of the ship rests 3 tons of uranium carefully stored in ultra-protected containers. If C. would listen, they could hear the ores silently sobbing over the loss of their mother, the mountain. With them there’s a child that refuses to speak but this only the mountain knows.
C. feels the eyes of the mountain pricking in their back. The mountain’s anger concentrates in the bottom of the infraspinatus muscles, as a pulsing reminder of their reason for this journey. They have to know why their mother, the mountain, had to die. The cloudy atmosphere is tense and C. notices the charged air infiltrating their nostrils. It is a scary act, to remain open to entities you haven’t been able to define. Though C. intuitively knows this air is toxic, it’s not as if they really have a choice, they need to breathe. Wading in a contaminated cloud, C. fills their lungs with a long inhale. 8500 km further north, an underground community can sense they have made connection. They are thrilled. They are hungry
C.’s logbook
DAY: 1
The collapsing mountain keeps appearing to me. I’m seeing her, from this ship. So far away though, I have to spend a lot of energy focussing. Once I locate her, she collapses. A huge cloud of dust rises on the horizon, where a minute before, she was standing. A huge roar reaches our ship. The sound vibrates in and between the containers.
DAY 5
No other crew members on this ship. Navigation remains a mystery.
Found the Blood Office, a cabin that was locked but somehow caught my attention; I noticed a strange smell when passing by. Decided to try and open it. The room is a mess. Moisty paper everywhere. Paper is classified in different folders that have different labels: “Uranium”, “Led”, “Katanga, Congo”, “Olen, Belgium”. I opened the “Led” folder and found screenshots of a testimonial of a farmer next to the Umicore factory in Hoboken near Antwerp somewhere in Belgium saying her cows became paralysed by ledpoisoning. In the other folders I found more suspicious material speaking of dubious practices of the enterprise related to Uranium.
DAY 10
I dreamed I visited a farm. An old, white man was sitting in the wicker chair, next to the window. Overlooking his fields, and behind it, a canal and boats passing by. As I enter the room, he asks me while staring outside: “Do you know that my grandfather helped to dig that canal?” “No,” I answer. “Joa,…” There’s a silence, and then he turns his face towards me, but it’s full with soil and his left eye is bleeding and the other is just a pulsing hole. A green light is coming through. And his mouth keeps moving. “My grandfather earned some extra money digging that canal. It’s always been hard earning a living with farming,” he says while he tries to get out of the stool, but he keeps slipping back. I realise I hold my knife in my hand. I step up and plant it exactly between his eyes. I wake up barking.
Where does C arrive now?
After a journey of two and a half weeks on open waters, their boat reaches the North Sea in western europe. It bends to the right to follow the Schelde river upstream. This is what they see: On the bank on their right, the tentacles of the sea infiltrate the lands, leaving the surface rippled and nurtured with salt and nanoplastics. Up above, there’s a white tailed eagle with an appetite looking for prey. Behind this spectacle, there’s the nuclear power plant in the city of Doel creating a huge white cloud of smoke. Contrasting the white smoke, there’s a black cloud from the Total refinery further in the distance. They are entering the port of Antwerp, Belgium.
C. looks to the left where a group of 3 young men is playing golf on the banks of the river in complete white outfits. C. feels a stab of pain in their back that is worsened by a sudden knocking noise coming from underneath their feet. C. quickly pulls a pair of multi-colored earplugs from their pocket, but even with these in place they don’t prevent them from feeling itchy around the chest. The lungs, the lungs, where outside meets inside. Where entities travel unseen. 55 km to the east, hungry bodies can feel C. coming closer. The connection is getting stronger and they are getting restless.
What’s that sound coming from the basement? What is happening there? The sound of metal bashing on metal, like something’s protesting inside one of the containers, smashing the doors, ready to break out. Like a warning sound the knocking awakens the ship and its surroundings but remains unnoticed by ear-plugged C. The noise echoes in the empty, abandoned houses of the desolate village of Doel that they are passing now. The last group of resistant citizens comes out on the dyke to see what shook them out of their sleep. They’re just standing there, half awake, half asleep, with an intensity in their eyes that C. has seen before. “Don’t get close to my ship!” C. shouts from the deck. It’s hard to predict the behaviour of zombies like them. Slowly they start trodding alongside the boat. A dense vibrating texture is infiltrating the air and water between the ship and the banks, while mouths move as if gasping for air. At the bottom of the ship, a growling answers their call in disharmonic tones.
C.’s logbook
DAY 19
As I had started to suspect, we entered the harbour of Antwerp. I have come to believe the ship knows I’m here. Or maybe worse, tricked me in here. I don’t know what it wants from me. I have tried to reach the mountain in my dreams, but the only images that come to me are those of the old man in the farm. I can’t seem to connect to my gut. I can’t seem to ‘know’.
DAY 20
Finally reached the mountain in a dream. She thanked me for carrying her message to the sore spot. She wanted to say something else, but transformed into a rat and her mouth opened aggressively. Most horrible, high pitched sound came out. Got anxious. Out of this mouth came more and more rats running with delirious eyes, peeping, screaming. Woke up because I couldn’t breathe. As if something was stuck in my throat.
A sudden halt of the ship abruptly ends the singing of the zombie choir and C. realises the anxious pain around their lungs is however still there. Other messages are trying to reach this saviour. Human bodies, so fucking vulnerable for infiltration. Weak. Fucking Weak There’s an aggressive sound of a huge crane starting to get some of the containers ashore. On the left “The World” is passing; a 196 meters long cruise ship packed with tourists peaking through their binoculars to be the first to spot the hand of giant Antigoon in the hand of Brabo. “The World” docks in front of the ship, while the crane moves a rusted, noisy container from C.’s cargo to the bank. The dock is now populated with a crowd of sleepless, homeless citizens of Doel, 165 cruiseship passengers making their way to the city’s center and an old container slowly sinking deeper into the sobby grounds between water and land. A bloody rat-tail shivering between its doors.
C. takes their LifeStraw out of the inner pocket of their jacket and kneels down to drink from a puddle of river water that splashed on the surface of the deck. Rehydrated, restless and confused they shout “Ciao!” to the disappearing homeless citizens, the pulsating rat-tail and the backs of tourists on the shore as the ship makes its way further inland. The sun is setting, the peak of the cathedral lights up, the flame of the Total refinery flares and half a million screens reflect in a million reddened eyes.
C.’s logbook
DAY 21
Feel we’re getting close to the final destination. They’re bringing me somewhere. Very tired. Legs feel heavy.
Where are they now?
The ship went left in the big Schelde turn, no longer following the river but entering the Albert canal. They must have been sailing this constructed waterway for more or less two hours now. Here and there some lanterns enlighten the path next to the water, but most of the time it’s pitch black. C. can hear the sound of a continuous trail of trucks passing on high speed from the motorway that accompanies them on the other side of the industrial terrain. There’s a smell of coal with a slight hint of biscuits. They must be approaching Herentals.
In the nighttime the journey is more quiet. All C. can hear is a soft scraping sound as if the ship is dragging something over the bottom of the canal. It is a constant sound that is sometimes briefly interrupted and followed by a muffled bang. The sound isn’t loud and therefore easy to forget, but it brings a suspended element to their journey. The tension is amplified by a sharp, aggressive sound of one of the containers scratching against concrete everytime the ship passes a bridge. The ship is packed too high for this waterway. C’s lucky it hasn’t been raining in months, in that case the ship would not be able to pass the many bridges on this itinerary. When C. looks up underneath the bridge, they can see traces of other containers who marked their passage. Somehow it feels good being accompanied, and C. takes it as a welcome from fellow seafarers.
The ship is now leaving a trace by dragging an unknown material at its tail over the bottom of the canal. Simultaneously it is leaving traces on the vaults of old bridges it passes. The materialisation of these traces produce a haunting soundscape. 25 kilometres further, a filthy pack of decomposing individuals is starting to get delirious. Smashing bones on each other in rhythmic movements. Their eyes are red and vague. Mouths chewing on moist air. So fucking hungry. WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG!
C.’s logbook
DAY 21 / DAY 22: somewhere in the night
I don’t like the feeling of getting dragged somewhere. Nothing for me, I take the lead. I am carrying my black tourmaline stone on me now constantly, but it doesn’t seem to be sufficient. Detached from myself. More even, I feel like my body isn’t mine, but…someone… else’s.
Exactly
Fucking exhausted. Think we’re heading to a highly polluted area and need to take precautions.
When the water splits into two directions, the ship keeps left to enter the canal Bocholt-Herentals which it will be sailing in the opposite direction. Soon it will enter a lock that will raise the water level with 7,5 metres. The procedure of entering and leaving the lock again takes some time, which offers C. a moment to arrive and try to calm down. They have been travelling for almost 22 days now, it’s a bit after midnight and C’s body feels heavy and tired. C takes a deep breath in. Yes, Breathe the poison, take it in, deeper. Let it enter inside your lungs where in and out meet. Where we can become you. Since this will be one of the last maskless breaths C. is willing to risk. Exhausted, they take out their Geiger counter and measure a radioactivity of 800 mSv. Which is more or less the standard these days, so no reason for panic but out of precaution C. takes out their radiation protection kit anyway. It’s better to be prepared when you’re transporting a whole ship full of radioactive potential, they think while checking if the Opinel knife is still firmly sitting in their sock.
The old lock opens its heavy doors, and the ship is allowed to continue its way. C. takes out a tube with radiation blocker and strips barenaked. The cream goes into every little skinfold leaving no limp unlifted, no fat untouched. C. starts to like this part of the process, the cream infiltrating their pores feels like the application of a liquid armour. It adds a bit of strength to their exhausted body. Our messiah on its way, WHO’S TAKING FUCKING LONG TO GET OUR NUTRITION HERE.
Where the hell are they?
They are located between locks 9 and 10 on the Albert Canal, near an area called Boeretang. On the right bank there’s the city of Mol. On the other bank it’s Dessel. Behind, there’s Geel and earlier they passed the village of Olen that hosted the workers of the Umicore factory that’s located there. Since 1922 the factory has been involved in radioactive practices. Radioactive levels were under control until the summer of 2023. But C.’s Geiger counter measured a value of 2000 mSv there, which exceeds even the newly raised standards for radiation. The ship passed this radioactive cloud more or less 30 minutes ago, and radiation levels here in Mol are still 1600 mSV, which might also have to do with the old, questionable reactor that is stationed here at the Study Centre for Nuclear Energy or the whole nations nuclear waste piling up on the left at Belgoprocess, Dessel, Belgium.
C. started to feel feverish after entering the radioactive cloud half an hour ago. The cloud has been quietly creeping out of the graveyard to contaminate and sicken remaining villagers. It seems not only radioactive levels have risen inside C.’s body, another substance seems to be contaminating their body too. “Why is there no cream to protect inner pores, holes and entries?” they worry while getting more suspicious and anxious. Somehow their earplugs won’t stick. The scraping sound that the ship is dragging with it has become deafening. C. can sense it throughout their whole body, adding extra distress without consent. The ship is faring in the pitchblack night, dragging with it a disharmonic orchestra of deep, clinging sounds. Underground, only 2 kilometres away from C. the excitement is going through the roof. Bones are rattling, teeth are clacking, skulls are crushed against dampy walls. We are sorry to put C. in this stressful situation, but we are so happy to sense them getting closer. They’re reaching us! So fucking close now! YOU SEE HOW GOOD OUR SPELLS ARE? The ship approaches with a soundscape with irregular interruptions of one, maximum two minutes. First there’s a silence, a moment of temporary relief followed by a high pitched scream coming from the belly of the ship. Visibly weakened, C. Our Dearly Beloved reacts to the scream as a call to action. They reach for their device.
C.’s logbook. Automatic transcript of voice message uploaded at
DAY 22 - 04:38h:
It’s worse than expected. Radiation levels are … too high. I feel … myself getting … Weaker with the … second. Send out an emergency call… Send.
Homebase. Fucking Finally. The canal’s borders become less straight, fading into the landscape like little grasping twigs. The canal oozes into a misty swamp, C. realises this also, while bending over to suppress an abdominal cramp. “How did we end up here?” C. wonders. We obviously know very well how and why we end up here together. We have been hungry for so long. We have worked these lands for so long. Until nothing that came out of it was feeding us anymore. All we needed was vitamins, now what we need is poison. C. came to us in a vision. They are a fucking vision, our messiah. We did everything to get them here. Dug up all our dead witches in search of spells. Fucking dug up their mothers too to be sure. Brought them back to life with our reactor. With a sudden shock C. realises: Is this it? Is this the final destination? The ship is no longer faring through water, but through a stream of red mud. Yes they are close enough now. Their whole body is full with our particles. C. is ours and ours alone. We can direct them wherever. We can put them on boats. We can make them fucking empty a mountain. They’re our dealer. They’re on our mission to feed us. Our feeder. Our holy feeder. A rush of anxiety rushes to C.’s head. Exactly at that time we create a huge wave of mud that washes over them and pulls the whole ship down. It pulls the ship deep, to the bottom of the canal. COME TO US. FEED US, OUR SAVIOUR. Mud enters the Blood Office, ink becoming unreadable. We pull them deeper and deeper. The heavy substance pushes towards the containers, pushes its way into every single hole, into C’s eyes and ear canals. We pull them deeper and deeper inside the earth, inside Our Burrow. WELCOME, WELCOME, OUR DEAR DEAR VISITORS.
C. opens their eyes lying in a puddle of their own vomit and excrements. The burrow is dark and humid. C.’s head pulses and burns. While their view isn’t sharp yet, they can distinguish figures ecstatic dancing with such energy it almost feels like fighting. As their view becomes sharper C. recognizes one of these bodies. They see the old man from the dream giggling while nervously biting on the fingers of a bright orange plastic glove. What is he doing here? His fleshy mouth holds a swollen tongue. Half of his face is rotten away and C. can see the bones coming through. His corps is fucking illuminated. C. quickly looks around and sees more bodies. There’s two of them masturbating on a bright green pile of… radiating nuclear waste. Their bodies look as if the composting processes halted somewhere halfway through, and the chemicals brought alive half rotten bodies that are now rammling along. Bumping and knocking on the ceiling of their tombs. To see our saviour C. here makes our rotten hearts fill with love. Our smuggler brought us our medicine. We are so fucking hungry. We let go of our dick, pick up one of the last remaining uranium ores and walk towards them. They look up at us, from their sticky gross puddle of puke. With one firm knock of the ore on the back of the head, C’s death. Thanks for your services.
Our burrow is one of the last warm spaces around the area. Rubbing! We want to rub our naked bones and flesh against this nuclear heath. Against the pulsating, bright green heaps of waste. It tastes so good. It tastes like eternity. We will eat this until eternity. We don’t share it. ARE YOU CRAZY?! Are you crazy?! We haunt! It’s just for us. We worked for it! Our whole lives in this mud. Digging in this mud! We lived and partially died here. THAT FUCKING SPELL WAS THE WORK OF A LIFETIME. Our mouths are so nervous. Constantly biting. We want to bite directly into those containers that C. brought for us. We don’t need C. We need nutrition! TAK TAK. Nutrition, like in the old days. Straight from the mud. Open them. Get what belongs to us! Wreck them open! Wreck that container open! We can’t! They won’t fucking open. We’re gnashing our black teeth. HOW CAN IT NOT OPEN?! We attack the containers. We need nutrition now that our carrots no longer feed us. Fucking hell, where’s a STONE!? Smashing stones. We crash our skeletons against the containers. We are not afraid to die! Death already. Death and hungry. So fucking hungry. FUCKING OPEN THOSE DOORS! WE NEED TO FEED! We’re shitting against the walls of the sealed containers. Take that mfs! Our limbs are aching so much. I heard something. I FUCKING HEARD SOMETHING MFS! The container door. It fucking opened! What the fuck is that? WHAT THE FUCK IS THERE? BEHIND THE DOOR! WTF IS THAT? It’s a fucking child, no way. It’s filthy. Filthy fucking child. Filthy like us. Like us, but completely in flesh. 6 years old? It opens its mouth COVER YOUR EARS! and spreads. It spreads a high pitched sound we never ever heard so deep down, so deep in our Burrow. It burns. IT FUCKING BURNS! We throw our bodies to the ground in terror as the scream goes on and on for a year. ONE FUCKING YEAR! Can’t move. Just lie there. We’re all just lying there. It’s like a fucking wall of sound. Smashing us. FUCKING SMASHING US. PUSHING US TO THE MUD! The scream of the child continues, how does it breathe? It is ooooooooooone looooooooooong exhale.
We lost limbs that year.
Body parts composted.
Sometimes we saw flashes.
We remembered a mountain.
Through child-like screams.
Sources of support and inspiration:
Thank you to elodie from Constant for inviting me and the support during the writing process. Also a big thank you to Bernadette Schnabel, Valeria Moro and Yi-Hong Wang for their generous reading and feedback.
And a warm appreciation to the music of Ana Roxanne and Anna Von Hausswolff for their company during the writing process.