Asbestos
20 min / 2016 / in collaboration with Graeme Arnfield
Mined, extracted, and woven, asbestos was the magic mineral. Towns became cities under its patronage, Persian kings entertained guests with its fireproof nature, and centuries of industry raked in the profits of its global application. We now live in the remains of this toxic dream, a dream that with the invention of electron microscopes revealed our material history as a disaster in waiting. Yet the asbestos industry has far from left us with extraction from the soil transforming to extraction from our walls. We are now faced with two options: to remove this material from our homes and start anew, or to build upon its residue. Removal is a dangerous and costly operation. So often we choose to live amongst it instead, choking out our walls with plastic tarping: the failed promises of modernism literally entombed all around us. Shot in the mining town of Asbestos,Quebec, home to the world’s largest asbestos mine that only stopped extraction in 2012, the film is a meditation on the entanglement of the fragility of bodies, the nonlinearity of progress, and the persistence of matter.
Exhibition list:
Premiere: Berlinale Forum Expanded, Berlin, Germany, 2017
Solo show: Asbestos, as an immersive installation, Roaming projects, London, UK, 2017
Solo show: Sasha Litvintseva, 12x12, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany, 2018
Solo show: Asbestos, questions of responsibility and (im)materialism, Flusser Archive, Berlin, Germany, 2018
Solo screening: Close-Up Film Centre, London, UK, 2017
Courtisane Festival, Ghent, Belgium, 2017
Chicago Underground Film Festival, Chicago, USA, 2017
Kasseler Dokfest, Kassel, Germany, 2017
Moscow International Experimental Film Festival, Moscow, Russia, 2017
Plastik Festival, Dublin, Ireland, 2017
Cinema do CIC - Centro Integrado de Cultura, Florianopolis, Brasil, 2017
Sluice Biennial, London, UK, 2017
Matter of Horror, Solyanka gallery, Moscow, Russia, 2018
International Festival of Video Art, Casablanca, Morocco: 2018
The Allure of Matter, Smart Museum, Chicago, USA, 2020
Ecology After Nature, e-flux, 2020
Ecology After Nature, Tramway, Glasgow, 2022
Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul, South Korea, 2023
Related:
Interview: The Magic Mineral, LUX online
Asbestos: Inside and outside, toxic and haptic
Geological filmmaking: seeing geology through film and film through geology
Installed as an immersive video installation, Asbestos solo show at Roaming Projects, London, UK, 2017
Walkthrough the installation: 3 rooms were covered in red plastic, as in the final sequence of the film, and audiences were given red hazmat suits to wear.
Below images: Sasha Litvintseva & Graeme Arnfield, Asbestos, 2016. Exhibition view of the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale THIS TOO, IS A MAP, SeMA Bunker, September 21-November 19 2023. Photo: GLIMWORKERS. Courtesy of the Seoul Museum of Art
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