09. April 2024 | book project | publication
Water is vital for sustaining life on the planet. But water is also capable of channeling, harboring, and reanimating contaminants left in the wake of the twentieth century—a time when chemical and nuclear technologies enchanted the industrialized world with a promise of permanent progress. Similarly, large-scale dam or irrigation projects that disrupt the ordinary flow of water can have profound consequences for surrounding ecosystems. In either case, water pollution and water mismanagement are often overlooked in public debates.
The Troubled Waters project team, consisting of researchers and artists, approaches this problem by exploring the graphic novel medium as a new way to narrate and represent these urgent issues for the general public. The project brings researchers and graphic artists together in a collaborative exchange to develop a series of three graphic novels centered around the issue of water pollution and water misuse in three emblematic post-industrial sites: a marine estuary, home to a notorious chemical dump in northwest Denmark; a remediated zone in the industrial heartland of the former East Germany where toxins have leached into the groundwater; and an enormous riverine wetland complex spanning several state borders in Eastern Europe, endangered both by a planned commercial waterway project and the current war in Ukraine.
These three graphic novel projects each utilize genre fiction conventions (horror, psychological thriller, speculative fiction, and noir) as an innovative way to disseminate ecological research about the dangers these sites pose to their immediate environments and the planet at large while also creating captivating stories about the relationship between humans and their environment, thus contributing to the ongoing discourse about the Anthropocene and its impact on culture and society. The Troubled Waters team consists of Michael Baers (researcher and artist), Caroline Ektander (Bauhaus University Weimar), Sebastian Lundsteen Nielsen (University of Stavanger), Mikkel Ørsted Sauzet (author and artist), and Asbjørn Skou (visual artist).