‘Troubled Soil’ investigates the Irish border
by looking at how border leakage emerges not only from the unboundedness of the earthly but from its industrialized exploitation. The investigation of mining advances in the area of the Sperrins, Tyrone County (Northern Ireland) exposes the border not as a delimitation between two national sovereign bodies, but as a historical zone marked by displacement and dispossession. Land leased off and opened up to mining business, the Sperrins reveal the act of bordering as the demarcation of a sacrificial periphery. Here, the right to not be bounded thusly is interpreted as a twofold reckoning: neither is it possible to contain the site of extraction and its toxics leakages, nor should those who inhabit such space be bound by the political decision to make them weather the impacts. Conceived as a theatrical play, the installation revolves around two testimonies videos: on one side, the voices of activists, politicians and journalists interviewed in-situ, and on the other, the voice of the landscape. During the event the public could follow the video and navigate the archive by reading the theatre script.