Toxic Commons is a research platform that engages with the elusive, complex, and often ambiguous dynamics of toxicity and the structures that sustain it. By fostering art–science collaborations and developing public-facing formats, it seeks to deepen understanding of toxicity’s entanglements with human, more-than-human, and planetary life, and open up spaces to respond to its enduring, uneven presence.
A defining feature of toxicity is its invisibility: it is often difficult to perceive and challenging to represent. Its violence unfolds slowly, in ways that are unspectacular yet deeply consequential, burdening certain humans, nonhumans, and ultimately the earth system as a whole.
In response to this challenge, the art-science network Toxic Commons was initiated in 2018 by Caroline Ektander, Antonia Alampi (Spore Initiative), Simone Müller (University of Augsburg), and the research cluster Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy including Ayushi Dhawan, Maximilian Feichtner, and Jonas Stuck. Since then, the network has branched out into different forms and outputs, shaped by those who first sowed its seed.
This page assembles and continues to grow the work of CAROLINE EKTANDER together with old and new collaborators, as she carries forward the platform’s research, curatorial, and artistic dimensions.