Redefining Communities through Art and Design

Global Storytelling Incubator

An Almanac of Compounds in South Western Ontario: Ultraviolet Light Pollution

Colour photograph magazine (11x17in). 2023.

     A look at high-frequency light emissions from the factory-farming sector. These glowing greenhouses in Chatham, Leamington, & Courtright, Ontario grow the tomatoes, peppers, berries, cucumbers, eggplants, cannabis, inc. which Ontarians take for granted. Nitrogen fertilization and ultraviolet plant lights power these facilities for mass-production. The power of these purple lights can be seen in the sky over 75km away, from dusk-dawn, illuminating the clouds of exhaust rising from neighboring plants, processing ethanol, alcohols, urea ammonium nitrate, natural-gas, and diesel fluid.
Factory-farms have evidently had detrimental impact on the health of First Nations people and Migrant workers across Canada by territorial displacement and extreme environmental conditions, according to the United Nations Declaration of Rights for Indigenous People, as analyzed by Indigenous legal scholars in Braiding Legal Orders (2019).
South-Western Ontario is a critical migration corridor for bird species whose navigational physiology relies on the natural violet lightwaves from the sun on the nighttime atmospheric horizon. Scattered with red-blinking windmills, this dramatic new landscape of “green-energy infrastructure” is certainly a monument that fragments the regional wetland ecosystem.

Global Storytelling Incubator, Charles Street Video March 16-23, 2024.

Emel Tabaku, Founder RCAD Initiative

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