Arsenic
Blackfoot
Blackfoot
The chemical element Arsenic (As) has a long and sinister medico-legal history as both poison and remedy. While its natural or anthropogenic caused contact with humans dates back only to early twenty first century. Taiwan is particularly important in this history as the first place where a disease associated with the poison is fully documented throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Endemic to Taiwan is the Blackfoot disease caused by the ingestion of arsenic from ground water, a severe disease of the blood vessels of the legs and feet. The disease was prevalent in the Southwest coast of Taiwan in the Chianan flood plains.
The documents presented in the Museum of the Infrastructural Unconscious at the 2012 Taipei Biennale are part of ‘Radical Meteorology’ an archive and larger body of research of the artist which traces the biography of arsenic and its importance in forensic toxicology towards mapping out a watery ethnography of infrastructure that speculates on activist practices forming between geology, epidemiology, development and law in the Bengal delta. Accompanying the documents are two scale models of the current disparate legal-scientific standards for arsenic in drinking water, 10 parts per billion (ppb) for the global north and 50 parts per billion (ppb) for the global south. The artist would like to thank the London Arsenic Group, UCL for the samples. (Nabil Ahmed)