Germination

2020 | Sound by Alice Boyd and text by Laura Grace Simpkins

’Germination’ is a sound piece based on Simpkins’ essay of the same name, currently being exhibited as part of Louder Than The Storm’s climate intersectionality exhibition and on Glasgow-based art radio channel Radiophrenia 2020. In the piece, Simpkins explores the connection between taking medication and the consequences for the environment.

Lithium carbonate, commonly used to manage bipolar disorder, is mined from salt flats and causes untold devastation to the surrounding environment. After seeing photographs of Bolivian salt flats, Simpkins decided to explore the tension between her need for medication and the personal guilt she experiences as a result of its environmental and colonial impacts.

In this piece, Boyd combines her voice, synths, and field recordings of the London environment, to soundtrack Simpkins’ essay. The soundscape communicates the eerie beauty of the salt flats, and how they are directly connected to Simpkins’ own mental health. As Simpkins writes, “Lithium is toxic to the environment, as too much of it is to my body. I’m toxic with the lithium, I thought, but I’m far more toxic without it.”

While the essay itself delves into the upsetting environmental and colonial complexities of lithium mining, the fact that this contributes a new, intersectional perspective to the environmental conversation is, in our view, a positive outcome. Without facing these difficult revelations, we will never achieve climate and environmental justice that is so crucial for constructive change.