TELEARUBA — broadcast
20261004 093000 UTC
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[00:00:06] of documented everything, so i filmed it and made photographs, etc.
[00:00:09] etc. um, and also i collected lot of
[00:00:13] this this this waste, um, and i
[00:00:17] found out that before shells started to dump all their
[00:00:20] waste over there, so which was in during the second world war, there
[00:00:24] was a mangrove forest over there, so it was completely green and
[00:00:28] overgrown and... very beautiful, it's a very beautiful, it used to be very
[00:00:32] beautiful bay. um, so I
[00:00:35] started to look for a way to use this
[00:00:38] material to make art pieces and I found a way
[00:00:42] to
[00:00:44] a di actually paint with it by mixing it with thinner and by mixing it
[00:00:48] with thinner it becomes completely liquid and you can paint with
[00:00:52] it, and then I started to make paintings
[00:00:55] of the former man grove forest that was there with
[00:00:59] the... same material that was actually destroying the Mangrov
[00:01:03] forest, and this is what we see on on the postcards that's what see
[00:01:07] on the postcards.
[00:01:30] um, because when you think about the name, yeah, I know there
[00:01:34] are
[00:01:35] of geological, um, there,
[00:01:37] in yeah, there are natural as natural asphalt lakes and people might
[00:01:41] think that this is what happened there, but the story was was quite different, no,
[00:01:44] there's been a documentary made, I think in 2012, if
[00:01:48] I'm not wrong, um, I think it was from tegenlicht
[00:01:52] a dutch documentary series, and in that documentary
[00:01:56] series there was this man who was responsible for dumping.
[00:02:00] the whole stuff, so he was there, and he
[00:02:03] tells in the camera, he became an activist later, um, he tells in
[00:02:07] the camera that basically anything could be dumped there,
[00:02:11] all toxic material mixed up and nobody cared, so it it's
[00:02:15] it's just a bunch of waste that's very toxic and i just got rid of it, and
[00:02:19] this was when exactly, i think 2012 that he told it
[00:02:23] in this documentary, but you can search for it on on, no, mean the actual
[00:02:27] dumping, this was oh, this was um, did that from the
[00:02:31] beginning
[00:02:31] of the second world war, so is 1940 till
[00:02:35] 1985, and
[00:02:37] then from one day to the other, they
[00:02:41] just told the government that they would leave,
[00:02:45] um, and they said to former prime minister
[00:02:48] Maria, we're leaving, we're
[00:02:52] sorry, yes everyone got fired and well, we will clean it up,
[00:02:56] no worries, we just go, and but of course that would be a...
[00:03:00] faster for the island because all these jobs, so they basically
[00:03:03] forced Maria
[00:03:04] to sign a contract to take it over for one guilder
[00:03:08] um and in this contract uh
[00:03:11] it says that shell will never be responsible
[00:03:15] for environmental and
[00:03:18] health um um consequences that
[00:03:22] there might be, yes nothing, yeah um and they just
[00:03:26] signed and then shell left and left everything and
[00:03:30] then um they exploited the whole refinery to
[00:03:34] a Venezuela of and they kept on dumping everything till
[00:03:37] 2019 so it's just that's been
[00:03:40] of decades of dumping to go back a little bit to your story so second world
[00:03:43] war both refineries um in the Dutch Caribbean so both
[00:03:48] in Lago for Aruba and Shell for Kudasaw were
[00:03:51] actually producing the fuel for the for the for the
[00:03:55] in airplanes for the allies and um and
[00:03:58] me they they say during war...
[00:04:01] of a 'um, you have to operate
[00:04:02] in a certain way, um, and but from what you're
[00:04:06] telling me here, this didn't just stop there, it just continued on and
[00:04:10] on, and then and 85 is
[00:04:13] very hard year for the history
[00:04:16] of the islands, yes, similar to shellen kuraso
[00:04:20] also, that was the same year they decided, and it was,
[00:04:23] you know, everything happening around the world, the oil
[00:04:26] prices uh being what they were, the the'.
[00:04:30] supply of oil being what it was and this crude that only these
[00:04:34] islands were producing, it was no longer profitable right, it was
[00:04:37] no longer profitable to produce this, and then just to give a little bit of
[00:04:41] contact along the years, both refineries were from the
[00:04:44] 20s, so 1920, so they were aging, not
[00:04:49] me efficient, so these large corporations came to point to make decision, where are we
[00:04:53] going to, where are we going to you, close
[00:04:56] faucet, and it was just similar story. to
[00:05:00] kutasaw happened in in Aruba and i
[00:05:03] remember that year was very rough on on the
[00:05:07] community, didn't saw as much den as i knew, but there i know there was
[00:05:11] a huge recession. loss of jobs for for lot of people,
[00:05:15] actually i have family that went to the
[00:05:18] Netherlands, because there were no jobs,
[00:05:22] unemployment rates were double digit, think even my
[00:05:25] dad had to resort to working in tourism to find a
[00:05:29] way to put food on the table, so so going back
[00:05:33] to the story that you had at the beginning, you know, the islands
[00:05:37] going through very rough time and making decisions, aruba back in
[00:05:41] the day chose, Okay, we are not going to continue with the refinery,
[00:05:45] although later on it did open, and they shifted the focus
[00:05:48] towards tourism, and we are now where we are
[00:05:52] today, with other concerns, however, I believe the prime
[00:05:56] minister at the time in 1985 was very concerned in
[00:06:00] preserving the jobs of of everyone back
[00:06:03] then, because this also got a lot of pressure from the Netherlands, from the
[00:06:07] Netherlands, yes, so it was like shell and the Netherlands pressuring
[00:06:11] here to uh... to sign this contract
[00:06:14] um, how did you find out about the Netherland, the
[00:06:17] government the Netherlands or the Netherlands being involved in this, talking to many people
[00:06:21] were around, involved around this, and this was the
[00:06:25] symbolical, they sold it for how much, one gilder,
[00:06:28] yes, yes, and this is actually not the first
[00:06:32] time that something like this happened, well, I think Shell
[00:06:36] did that there for the first time, um, and it
[00:06:40] worked, because they got rid of... all their
[00:06:43] responsibilities yeah um
[00:06:44] and they later on uh exploited
[00:06:48] this whole system to nigeria
[00:06:52] so what they they started in kurasal as
[00:06:56] maybe you could i see it as pilot can we get rid
[00:07:00] of all our responsibilities we i don't
[00:07:02] know um yes they can and
[00:07:06] bypass them and they are doing the same thing in Nigeria a
[00:07:10] huge scale like much larger than i don't larger
[00:07:14] than imaginable than the in preparing for this program i also read of a
[00:07:17] company in the US and this was back in the 40s and the 50s they
[00:07:21] dumped also industrial waste in into the
[00:07:25] nagara false area and then in the 50
[00:07:29] sold uh this piece of land again not for one
[00:07:33] gilder but for one dollar yeah to the board of
[00:07:36] education and what happened there is they
[00:07:40] decided to build a school there. and in the 70s
[00:07:44] it came forward um that due to rain and the
[00:07:47] weather all the toxic was started to come
[00:07:51] upwards and
[00:07:52] there was a school builder so you know lot of people got sick started dying
[00:07:56] all these different illnesses and i think that's in the 70s and
[00:08:00] there was like huge outcry to president carter to you know you
[00:08:03] have to do something about this so this happened in this in the
[00:08:07] in the 70s um and then we have the case of kutasaw
[00:08:10] in 80 85. yeah
[00:08:12] and obviously in 85 no one really
[00:08:15] knew what was mean the community didn't know
[00:08:19] but
[00:08:19] today still not they
[00:08:21] were like we're getting a whole refinery to continue yeah
[00:08:24] well i started to read lot of um researches at the
[00:08:28] karmabi yeah um also uh there were like two
[00:08:32] papers um that stroke me
[00:08:35] um and there were investigations in what is the
[00:08:39] source or the reason that so... many people
[00:08:43] on kur get cancer so like it was huge
[00:08:46] percentage and one of this
[00:08:49] research said um
[00:08:52] oh oh we don't know yeah theoretically it
[00:08:56] could be the refinery but that won't be the case
[00:09:00] here um no explanation why
[00:09:04] it won't be the case here oh it probably because these
[00:09:08] weird people here eat this very strange food from
[00:09:12] venezuela. they eat
[00:09:13] a corn pudding
[00:09:17] and they eat it hot, who eats their pudding hot?
[00:09:21] that's probably the cause of cancer in the 60s,
[00:09:25] and then there was this other research, same about the
[00:09:29] same time, um, also about
[00:09:33] what's the reason, what's the cause of all these illnesses
[00:09:36] here? oh, oh, it's probably it's just the
[00:09:40] race, it's the black people. really yes, also this was
[00:09:44] also voiced in the 60's, yes, and it's both um
[00:09:47] connected to the university in Groningen, in the
[00:09:50] Netherlands, and you know, it's science, so when
[00:09:54] there's this research and this conclusion, then it's fact,
[00:09:58] right? yeah, you have to do another research and come with other
[00:10:01] conclusions, and before that, the the first thing is fact,
[00:10:05] and today still people are like, oh yeah, this pudding is not good for
[00:10:08] you, it's crazy talks, it's crazy, yes,
[00:11:04] Kada bês mi tra riba un auto, mi ta korra riba mi famia y é família e
[00:11:08] kliente, pesei mi ta hasi mi maior esfuerso pa é auto keda
[00:11:11] bon. Desdi 1983, Jr. Center su prioridadi ta pa
[00:11:15] brinda siguridadi riba kaminda, ku tairan internasionalmenti
[00:11:19] sertifika na prejus pa pueblo. Mi nombre ta Franklin Romero,
[00:11:23] mi ta orgulhosu di trata bo auto (
[00:11:29] Duna bu kasa sentidu di freskura ku solamente yerba artificial
[00:11:32] di JR auto center, nos supplier
[00:11:36] responsable a instalar tur estadionan
[00:11:39] olimpiku na aquí ta
[00:11:40] Beijing. obtenibel
[00:11:44] kalidad aki E na Aruba, ofresí pabu door di JR autocenter, for di
[00:11:48] diferente tipo di yerba segun é nisisidadi ki bo ten.
[00:11:52] Duna bu kasas y sentidu di freskura.
[00:14:16] and everything that they couldn't do about it and we find ourselves
[00:14:20] aruba and I'm sure you came here to the art fair
[00:14:23] participated. also have refinery and
[00:14:27] I'm I'm curious as to there was a point where you started to
[00:14:31] researching aruba as well or will that come
[00:14:34] a future point um for sure yes um
[00:14:38] because I I did a whole research in Kurasaw and made an exhibition at
[00:14:42] Landuis Bloomhof in Kurasaw and we did a
[00:14:46] whole series of lectures and etc etc
[00:14:48] and um then um because
[00:14:52] I did that there this exhibition. I was invited
[00:14:56] by uh Renvik Geronimo from Aruba to show the
[00:15:00] series uh from kurasao here on
[00:15:03] Aruba and also he was like okay you please please also
[00:15:07] come take a look at Lago uh which I did this week so he showed
[00:15:11] me around and um and told a lot about the history
[00:15:15] etc etc um and I
[00:15:19] actually found out that the waste that is still here
[00:15:23] around that the old tarpit that was cleaned, there's
[00:15:27] still a lot of waste over there when you go there um and
[00:15:31] uh so
[00:15:31] I collected lot of it and I uh put it
[00:15:35] behind next to the way. that i have from kurasou, i
[00:15:38] brought some to to compare, and it it seems to
[00:15:42] me that it's kind the same, it looks very similar, uh, so
[00:15:46] i going going to take it home to my studio in Amsterdam, i'm
[00:15:50] going to test if it's really the same, and i'm planning to make
[00:15:54] series of paintings in which i combine the waste from
[00:15:57] kurasal with the waste from aruba to like
[00:16:01] also compare it in an image, so i'm going to make series of art
[00:16:05] pieces, yes, and hope to show it, later on uh here
[00:16:09] on Aruba yeah so that's
[00:16:10] what i plan to do that's quite interesting think about the exposition in
[00:16:14] kurasaw at at lanthause bloomh
[00:16:17] bloomh um how was it received by the community
[00:16:21] did you get lot of interest uh did
[00:16:25] um also lot of press so it the exhibition was there for two
[00:16:29] months and i don't know it's been in so many articles and
[00:16:32] radio interviews etc etc so it's so many um although
[00:16:36] it i have ' to say it is really really hard
[00:16:40] to reach the people that are
[00:16:43] most vulnerable for the pollution, because this asphalt lake is
[00:16:47] still there and people think that it's not doing
[00:16:51] anything, it's not harming anyone right now, but that's not
[00:16:55] true, it's it's it goes deep in the water and and in
[00:16:59] in the soil and um it's
[00:17:03] damping so it's it's really hot because it's it's a huge black field
[00:17:07] it's It's the size of I don't 50 football fields or so 50
[00:17:11] foot soccer fields oh wow so it's it's
[00:17:14] big um and when it gets hot it
[00:17:18] damps so when you walk around there within like half an hour
[00:17:22] or so you get headache you get really sick
[00:17:25] um uh and dizzy and and nauseous
[00:17:28] and um I experienced
[00:17:32] brain fog and I can imagine when you live there and you have this
[00:17:36] brain folk all the time. "you don't know how it is when you don't have the
[00:17:39] brain fog. wait, and how long were you in contact with this and you already had
[00:17:43] brain fog? half an hour or so. okay, yes. did did
[00:17:47] you also do research in terms of illnesses? did you get
[00:17:51] that far or did you talk to people that research on the
[00:17:55] illnesses? there is no research.
[00:17:58] right now there is no, nothing,
[00:18:02] just we know that there was a really high risk of cancer when the
[00:18:06] refinery was still open. but
[00:18:08] you know um um effects on the
[00:18:12] brain you do not know mean
[00:18:16] you don't know yeah so and brain folk when you
[00:18:20] experience brainfk all the time then you don't know that your experience
[00:18:24] in it because you don't know any better right yeah so that's what's
[00:18:27] going on there right now and and it's i don't know mean
[00:18:31] obviously you were able to tell that something's not right with you but you think
[00:18:35] the people that are living there are just thinking is the way life is, i think so, yes,
[00:18:39] and did, i started to organize tours for
[00:18:43] the visitors of my exhibition, so i brought many people to the asphalt lake,
[00:18:46] so we actually were breaking in with many people, and you
[00:18:53] no, no, only the very last time, which was a little bit on purpose, because
[00:18:57] um,
[00:18:57] then i um, told the evening before on the
[00:19:01] radio that i was going to do that on
[00:19:03] that and that time, and then the director was waiting for us, the
[00:19:06] director of... of buskabai and buskabai is like the um
[00:19:10] the env like the the the entity yes the entity the organization
[00:19:14] it's it's an um it's from the government yeah
[00:19:18] um and he was waiting for me he's the director and he was a little bit angry and
[00:19:22] i was like oh i'm so nice to meet you and he's actually
[00:19:26] kind um and then um
[00:19:29] i got to talk with him and he had very weird story which
[00:19:33] find really hard to believe because he doesn't show any proof.
[00:19:37] he tells me that he hired
[00:19:41] um an um company in the US who did
[00:19:45] research like the soil and the water and also this
[00:19:48] waste and they gave an advice on how to
[00:19:52] deal with it and he says that this
[00:19:56] company advised him to not clean it all but
[00:19:59] only just the upper layer and then dump garbage
[00:20:03] top of it um which is a really weird advice i would...
[00:20:07] say and they also said there was no toxics,
[00:20:11] oil residue in the water or in the
[00:20:14] soil um so i was like oh so this is all good news according
[00:20:18] to this company and then he said yes it's it's is great
[00:20:22] fine
[00:20:22] everything and no problem at all so
[00:20:24] i asked him can you show me the file then i would like i would like to
[00:20:28] see what they research and and their methods etc and then said no it's
[00:20:32] a secret so he was a bl just to share
[00:20:36] general information NBA and it's a secret, so there is
[00:20:40] apparently good news, but the good news is secret,
[00:20:43] which I don't know, I have my doubts, and I also
[00:20:47] told him that I have my doubts about it, and he said, well... do you believe in
[00:20:50] god? claiming that i should then also believe in
[00:20:54] him, yeah, which is of course very odd, very odd
[00:20:58] way to go about things, yes, so i'm not done with that
[00:21:01] research, and this happened this year, when this week, this
[00:21:05] week, so there's more to come, there's more to come about that,
[00:21:08] yes, and tell me as well, coming back
[00:21:12] to Aruba, because obviously you're here with the art fair
[00:21:16] and your works are still on display, for the entire month.
[00:21:20] of uh September, October, this month, this month, so all the way through
[00:21:24] the end of September, okay, and
[00:21:27] how was it received here, and did you have
[00:21:30] conversations with with the community about, yes, um,
[00:21:34] similar situation here in Aruba, yeah, many people uh
[00:21:38] were like surprised that this was all going on, um,
[00:21:41] and because most people don't know, and people started to
[00:21:45] talk about the situation here, and
[00:21:47] they asked me, can you please research here as well, which is something that I'm going
[00:21:51] to do also I spoke with people about like the beginning of this whole
[00:21:55] series which was in the Netherlands with Tata Steel because I
[00:21:59] did succeed in getting lot of attention for
[00:22:02] it um so there were lot of newspapers and
[00:22:06] television items about the work that I made um
[00:22:10] and then I started to say in interviews that I
[00:22:14] thought that the director of Tata Steel should actually buy his own
[00:22:17] garbage bag meaning he had to buy my part pieces, which
[00:22:21] he then did, he came by to my exhibition with the whole delegation
[00:22:25] the factory, and they bought a few
[00:22:28] pieces, um, and then I was like, oh, that is nice, but it's also
[00:22:32] kind of a form of green washing right, um, which doesn't
[00:22:36] help anyone, um, so then I gave him as like
[00:22:40] a gift with this art
[00:22:43] pieces, five years every six months,
[00:22:47] one hour of my time to help him. leave
[00:22:51] or become a green company and he accepted, so since
[00:22:55] then we're meeting often um, but after few
[00:22:58] years I
[00:23:00] found out, well found out, I just I'm reading everything and and following
[00:23:04] everything is that they will never be a green or clean company
[00:23:08] ever, it's not going to happen, which means that they have to
[00:23:12] leave, and now I'm a part of a group of
[00:23:16] people and we're trying to actually buy Tata Steel.
[00:23:20] to make them close down and then build new city and
[00:23:24] also huge area
[00:23:27] um uh for new um industry that's actually clean
[00:23:31] industry to make sure that we can keep all the jobs
[00:23:34] and um not harming the environment and the
[00:23:38] health of people um how how far
[00:23:42] along are you in this process and how did you get more people interested
[00:23:45] into buying back such such a big.
[00:23:50] This is yes, it's not my idea, I i just um uh it's an
[00:23:54] idea of of some other people, it's a collaboration,
[00:23:57] yes um and um yeah we
[00:24:00] well we are quite far in all the plants and we
[00:24:04] are
[00:24:05] we we are quite far actually yes so I'm very optimistic
[00:24:09] about it and what was nice is that when I came
[00:24:13] to cursal I um
[00:24:17] met uh um Andre Kasimir. we was one
[00:24:21] the founders of Greentown Curassall which is kind of similar
[00:24:24] plan for the environment
[00:24:27] around the refinery the east
[00:24:30] refinery in Kurasaw um also to make like
[00:24:34] new industries to create jobs but then a way
[00:24:38] that's not harming the environment yes so I
[00:24:42] think that this is like globally a
[00:24:45] potential solution for because people do need
[00:24:49] the jobs. people do need industries, but
[00:24:53] all these heavy industries around the globe are made 100, 150
[00:24:57] years ago and they are very
[00:25:00] harmful, but we are so i don't
[00:25:04] know smart as people, we can we can do so
[00:25:08] much um when you just pass by
[00:25:12] any heavy industry factory, it's
[00:25:14] it's crazy how huge
[00:25:20] the it is right, it's it's i when you think about... globe. that people designed this whole factory and they
[00:25:24] made it work and it's it's like magic, so if if
[00:25:28] we as human beings can build that, we can also
[00:25:31] build something that's not harmful, and it's actually
[00:25:35] bringing us things that we need, bringing
[00:25:38] us, I don't,
[00:25:42] healthy planet, um, so I i'm
[00:25:46] really for that,
[00:25:48] so I try to make like series of series on
[00:25:49] around places that have like
[00:25:53] similar
[00:25:54] situations
[00:25:59] and doesn't really matter if factories are still open. closing
[00:26:03] right now or just closed, it's it's
[00:26:07] similar, and we need a solution for all these
[00:26:10] places, well the government of Aruba mentioned that they are
[00:26:14] not interested in in in reopening the refinery or
[00:26:18] anything that has to do with part of that, so if they
[00:26:22] do find or if there comes another organization that is willing
[00:26:25] to you know clean or become make it into
[00:26:29] a or remove the whole pollution that
[00:26:33] happened that would be a great uh development
[00:26:37] so yeah and you saw a little bit of that in kudas out so people trying yeah
[00:26:41] yeah and and made new deal with the CEO of Tata
[00:26:44] Steel which is that um uh we
[00:26:48] both have like um so in the upcoming
[00:26:52] five or six years or so he is going from
[00:26:56] being a problem to being a solution
[00:26:59] whatever the solution may be if it's a green fact. three or closing
[00:27:03] down, it's it's going to be closing down, yeah, we know right now, but
[00:27:07] um, and then he's going to hand a blueprint of
[00:27:11] how he got there, that's that's the deal we made, so this
[00:27:15] blueprint I can use to make like a hand out to all
[00:27:18] these places in the world with the same
[00:27:21] situations, so we can, I don't, if we have solution
[00:27:25] like the key to what can we do, we can all use the same key,
[00:27:29] right, to, and and do you see? do you work with
[00:27:33] other similar activists around the globe that have the same focus
[00:27:37] that maybe not with art but a different
[00:27:40] way do research and try to bring forward
[00:27:43] solutions or way to overcome this because you you bring it
[00:27:47] forward, mean i see your art and i saw it in st nicholas
[00:27:50] that you know you use them environmental ways or the
[00:27:54] not sorry the toxic waves into art, have you seen
[00:27:58] others do something different with it and also try to come up? with
[00:28:02] solutions, no, and there's no network, so maybe that could be
[00:28:06] something, no, yeah, well actually, I we were just mentioning Aaron Brukovic,
[00:28:10] so I just two weeks ago met this journalist and she is working with
[00:28:14] Aron Brukovic for a while, Aron brukovic is now very much focused on
[00:28:18] data centers in the US, um, and
[00:28:22] this exactly is what she said to me, she said, oh, I
[00:28:25] know few people around the globe, like four or five
[00:28:29] people who are doing kind of similar things. and I'm going to
[00:28:33] make a network and connect you, so this is just
[00:28:36] happening, I
[00:28:46] up um uh, I know you after now you've been a solo
[00:28:50] ranger, advocating, doing research,
[00:28:54] working with all these um, you know different entities, both
[00:29:25] see myself and what about working with universities or education,
[00:29:28] do give lectures and stuff but also to motivate so we can't do
[00:29:32] this, i am sure, i'm very optimistic in the
[00:29:36] possibilities um, but you have to do it right, so that
[00:29:39] if there's a possibility doesn't mean that people actually are going to do it, so
[00:29:43] go on, go on, it's
[00:29:49] your your collection that you made from the
[00:29:53] industrial waste in kur, how many, how many pieces did you sell, do you
[00:29:57] know who you sold it to, maybe could this be a way to
[00:30:00] start, yes, well i um, I sell
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