"Superfund is the name given to the environmental program established to address abandoned hazardous waste sites. It is also the name of the fund established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, as amended. This law allows the EPA to clean up such sites and to compel responsible parties to perform cleanups or reimburse the government for EPA-led clean-ups." - eldcacag.org
"All human development is predicated on our interaction with the soil, the air, the climate, the plants, and the animals of the places in which we live. The inner archetypes in a place formed the spiritually based ecological mind-set required to establish and maintain a correct and sustainable relationship with place. This orientation, was, in turn, reinforced by a kind of physical 'mimicry,' a 'geopsyche,' or that interaction between inner and outer realities that often takes place when a group of people live in a particular place for a long period of time." - Gregory Cajete, Natural Laws of Interdependence, 2000.
Superfund sites are places you want to get to know. If you click on the map at the bottom of this page, it will show you how to find one near you. They are powerful places, they are difficult to define because they’re really not ever one thing, they are between worlds. They've been fucked up, taken an ecological beating. But they are also sites that are in recovery. And they are all very different in their character and who they are as entities.
Hang out there. Listen to what's going on. Do a lot of listening. Think of the site as the entity that it is, a collective expression of life and process.
Build something that honors the site. Consider its history and its future. Think of what you build as a mobile shrine that you can always take with you.
Bring the shrine to the site. Use the shrine as a focal point for ritual action aka play. Play with the shrine, play with the site entity, play with your friends there. PLAY is the WAY, it's how relationships can develop and we can understand deeper levels and boundaries.
Keep visiting, keep up with them, go talk to them, try and be a good listener.
Relationships take work, and this project is way to develop relationships with Superfund sites.
