Phosphopraxis

Phosphorescent pigment under UV-A light. The pigment was created from fertiliser (Triple Superphosphate sourced from Phosphate Rock in the Bou Craa mine), doped with Europium, produced with chemist Kurt Lawson and Prof. Sandie Dann at Loughborough University. The project was commissioned by RADAR.

Christmas card issued by the Empresa Nacional Minera del Sahara S.A., portrait of a centuries-old acacia that trade caravans used to navigate through the desert. The place where the tree stood is now the centre of the Bou-Craa phosphate mine. — Christmas card issued by the Empresa Nacional Minera del Sahara S.A., portrait of a centuries-old acacia that trade caravans used to navigate through the desert. The place where the tree stood is now the centre of the Bou-Craa mine in the occupied Western Sahara, the world's largest concentrated deposit of phosphate. Source: Instituto Geológico y Minero de Espana.

Image of the Frondicularia Fosfatica, an example of marine life fossils creating phosphate deposits. — Frondicularia Fosfatica. Marine life fossils creating phosphate deposits. Source: National Mining Company of the Sahara (ENMINSA) Discovery, measurement and evaluation of the Bu-Craa phosphate deposit. Madrid: ENMINSA, 1966. Image courtesy of Lino Camprubi.

Image of the making of the phosphorescent pigment, showing lab equipment from Loughborough University's chemistry lab. — Image of the making of the phosphorescent pigment, 'Fosfato Abigarrado', created with fertiliser made from phosphate rock mined in Bou Craa, and doped with Europium, produced with chemist Kurt Lawson and Prof. Sandie Dann, Loughborough University. The project was commissioned by RADAR.

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Nutrients are not neutral. Continuing FRAUD's enquiry into critical minerals, this project investigates the finantialisation of waste and nutrient upcycling through a more-than-resource/commodity examination of phosphate. Sedimentary phosphate rock is a finite non-manufacturable resource central to the production of industrial fertiliser, and therefore critical to food security, which is necessarily tightly embroiled with conditions of extraction.

As fertiliser increasingly eutrophicates rivers with the accumulation of agricultural run-off, FRAUD is tending to wastewater as well as the “historiographical invisibility” of extractive practices central to the production of industrial fertiliser and its finantialisation through phosphate credits within nutrient mitigation schemes. With Sewage Treatment Works often being the largest tributaries of many European rivers, these water bodies now fall under the definition of wastewater. FRAUD’s aim is to base its experiments in how this refuse is being managed, recycled and upcycled as fertiliser to think with our inseparability to this material’s commodification and its toxic effects.

This project inscribes itself within a desire to be attentive to re-circularity and decomposition, or to quote Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, “the breakdown and circulation of matter that rebalances generation, productivity, and excess in a finite Earth”. At the core of this enquiry is to think materially about the ecolonisation of phosphate upcycling, the finantialisation of its re-circulation, as well as its place in non-modern belief systems.

This project has received the support of ArtAngel, RADAR, and the Stanley Picker's 'Art and Design' fellowship.