Tracing Toxicity. Following routes and temporalities of a collection vintage car’s contaminants by artistic research practices

Abstract

The basis for this contribution is the essay, “Toxic Leftovers of Collecting” (Caviezel 2022: 69-78), which deals with the processes involved in decontaminating asbestos-contaminated vintage cars in a Swiss foundation’s collection. Extending the body of research to its relational contexts of more-than-human ecologies, this contribution focuses on asbestos and rubber components that contain asbestos, both of which are built into vintage cars. Following the traces of these materials offers insight into the post-/colonial entanglements of the mining, processing, and trading industries. Tracing as a practice of artistic research addresses the fragmentary nature of those transnational ecologies and the emerging multivocal, multilocal, and multisensory narratives by spinning mental networks between the multifaceted fragments connected to the collection objects.