what comes after the ashes
2026 - 2028 | Tunisia - Netherlands
artistic research in collaboration with Aymen Amami on sound design, Youssef Baklouti on storytelling and tunisian mythologies research, activists and population of Gabés
https://whatcomesaftertheashes.cargo.site
Oct 1st - 11th
Iteration 1 - A/V installation
A goat skin, stretched across the walls
the way a skin is stretched to make a drum or a gembri in Tunisia.
The goat was sacrificed by miners,
to ask the spirits underground for permission to enter the mine.
The skin was given to me by an instrument maker.
His gembri sounds through it.
On the skin, a collage of footage filmed during a sarha سرحة, a
crossing,
over a phosphogypsum stack.
Phosphogypsum is what remains when phosphate is turned into fertilizer
by the wet process.
Calcium sulfate dihydrate (CaSO₄·2H₂O).
Heavy metals. Rare earth elements. Radioactive material.
Part of it is dumped into the sea.
The rest is piled into low, uneven hills.
The ground looks calcined.
The surface is pale, dry and compact.
It is exposed to wind and erosion.
It is stable underfoot.
Sounds recorded in Gabès, around the Groupe Chimique Tunisien,
where the extracted phosphate is transformed into fertilizer.
A conversation in Tunisian, co-written with a storyteller,
about the djinns and dragons the miners fear.
On the floor, NPK fertilizer, bought in the Netherlands.
The phosphate in it was mined, in part, in Tunisia.
It is stable underfoot.
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