DIOXIN

The plot of my photo shoot is inspired by the ecological heroin of the Anthropocene Nausicaa who is the protagonist in the animé movie written and directed in 1984 by the Japanese artist “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind”. The Japanese director brings up concerns like the atomic catastrophes caused by the humans, the acceleration towards industrialisation and capitalism that have brought on the brink of the collapse the future of our planet and finally the difficult relationship in between humans and nonhumans. The crucial event that inspired Miyazaki’s story was the mercury poisoning catastrophe that affected the Minamata Bay in 1956 caused by the reckless decision of a chemical company to dump in the Bay tainted water. In doing so, all the marine wildlife and humans that fed themselves with the seafood fished from that bay were badly affected by the poison that caused severe damages to the neurological human system. Likewise, my project has been inspired by the wound afflicted to my land, located in the province of Naples (Italy), by the local eco-mafias that have dumped poisoning chemical waste in the soil. In “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” the plot takes place a thousand year after a catastrophic event called the Seven Days of Fire that badly poisoned all the planet. The world turned up in a toxic forest inhabited by gigantic monstrous insect like the Ohmu. Next to the Toxic Jungle there is the Valley of the Wind where Nausicaä lives. Through several excursions in the forest Nausicaa discovers that the soil, air and water beneath the forest are clean because of the Ohmu which function is that one to protect and spread the growth of the forest. Nausicaä finds out that she is in empathy with the Ohmu and with the rest of the creatures that populated the Toxic Forest. Nonetheless, the Ohmu are aggressive and violent creatures whose role is that one to cleanse and reinvigorate the contaminated Earth via the spread of the forest.