Google Speech-to-Text API Automatic Transcription (Chirp). Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:06of documented everything, so i filmed it and made photographs, etc.
00:00:09etc. um, and also i collected lot of
00:00:13this this this waste, um, and i
00:00:17found out that before shells started to dump all their
00:00:20waste over there, so which was in during the second world war, there
00:00:24was a mangrove forest over there, so it was completely green and
00:00:28overgrown and... very beautiful, it's a very beautiful, it used to be very
00:00:32beautiful bay. um, so I
00:00:35started to look for a way to use this
00:00:38material to make art pieces and I found a way
00:00:42to
00:00:44a di actually paint with it by mixing it with thinner and by mixing it
00:00:48with thinner it becomes completely liquid and you can paint with
00:00:52it, and then I started to make paintings
00:00:55of the former man grove forest that was there with
00:00:59the... same material that was actually destroying the Mangrov
00:01:03forest, and this is what we see on on the postcards that's what see
00:01:07on the postcards.
00:01:30um, because when you think about the name, yeah, I know there
00:01:34are
00:01:35of geological, um, there,
00:01:37in yeah, there are natural as natural asphalt lakes and people might
00:01:41think that this is what happened there, but the story was was quite different, no,
00:01:44there's been a documentary made, I think in 2012, if
00:01:48I'm not wrong, um, I think it was from tegenlicht
00:01:52a dutch documentary series, and in that documentary
00:01:56series there was this man who was responsible for dumping.
00:02:00the whole stuff, so he was there, and he
00:02:03tells in the camera, he became an activist later, um, he tells in
00:02:07the camera that basically anything could be dumped there,
00:02:11all toxic material mixed up and nobody cared, so it it's
00:02:15it's just a bunch of waste that's very toxic and i just got rid of it, and
00:02:19this was when exactly, i think 2012 that he told it
00:02:23in this documentary, but you can search for it on on, no, mean the actual
00:02:27dumping, this was oh, this was um, did that from the
00:02:31beginning
00:02:31of the second world war, so is 1940 till
00:02:351985, and
00:02:37then from one day to the other, they
00:02:41just told the government that they would leave,
00:02:45um, and they said to former prime minister
00:02:48Maria, we're leaving, we're
00:02:52sorry, yes everyone got fired and well, we will clean it up,
00:02:56no worries, we just go, and but of course that would be a...
00:03:00faster for the island because all these jobs, so they basically
00:03:03forced Maria
00:03:04to sign a contract to take it over for one guilder
00:03:08um and in this contract uh
00:03:11it says that shell will never be responsible
00:03:15for environmental and
00:03:18health um um consequences that
00:03:22there might be, yes nothing, yeah um and they just
00:03:26signed and then shell left and left everything and
00:03:30then um they exploited the whole refinery to
00:03:34a Venezuela of and they kept on dumping everything till
00:03:372019 so it's just that's been
00:03:40of decades of dumping to go back a little bit to your story so second world
00:03:43war both refineries um in the Dutch Caribbean so both
00:03:48in Lago for Aruba and Shell for Kudasaw were
00:03:51actually producing the fuel for the for the for the
00:03:55in airplanes for the allies and um and
00:03:58me they they say during war...
00:04:01of a 'um, you have to operate
00:04:02in a certain way, um, and but from what you're
00:04:06telling me here, this didn't just stop there, it just continued on and
00:04:10on, and then and 85 is
00:04:13very hard year for the history
00:04:16of the islands, yes, similar to shellen kuraso
00:04:20also, that was the same year they decided, and it was,
00:04:23you know, everything happening around the world, the oil
00:04:26prices uh being what they were, the the'.
00:04:30supply of oil being what it was and this crude that only these
00:04:34islands were producing, it was no longer profitable right, it was
00:04:37no longer profitable to produce this, and then just to give a little bit of
00:04:41contact along the years, both refineries were from the
00:04:4420s, so 1920, so they were aging, not
00:04:49me efficient, so these large corporations came to point to make decision, where are we
00:04:53going to, where are we going to you, close
00:04:56faucet, and it was just similar story. to
00:05:00kutasaw happened in in Aruba and i
00:05:03remember that year was very rough on on the
00:05:07community, didn't saw as much den as i knew, but there i know there was
00:05:11a huge recession. loss of jobs for for lot of people,
00:05:15actually i have family that went to the
00:05:18Netherlands, because there were no jobs,
00:05:22unemployment rates were double digit, think even my
00:05:25dad had to resort to working in tourism to find a
00:05:29way to put food on the table, so so going back
00:05:33to the story that you had at the beginning, you know, the islands
00:05:37going through very rough time and making decisions, aruba back in
00:05:41the day chose, Okay, we are not going to continue with the refinery,
00:05:45although later on it did open, and they shifted the focus
00:05:48towards tourism, and we are now where we are
00:05:52today, with other concerns, however, I believe the prime
00:05:56minister at the time in 1985 was very concerned in
00:06:00preserving the jobs of of everyone back
00:06:03then, because this also got a lot of pressure from the Netherlands, from the
00:06:07Netherlands, yes, so it was like shell and the Netherlands pressuring
00:06:11here to uh... to sign this contract
00:06:14um, how did you find out about the Netherland, the
00:06:17government the Netherlands or the Netherlands being involved in this, talking to many people
00:06:21were around, involved around this, and this was the
00:06:25symbolical, they sold it for how much, one gilder,
00:06:28yes, yes, and this is actually not the first
00:06:32time that something like this happened, well, I think Shell
00:06:36did that there for the first time, um, and it
00:06:40worked, because they got rid of... all their
00:06:43responsibilities yeah um
00:06:44and they later on uh exploited
00:06:48this whole system to nigeria
00:06:52so what they they started in kurasal as
00:06:56maybe you could i see it as pilot can we get rid
00:07:00of all our responsibilities we i don't
00:07:02know um yes they can and
00:07:06bypass them and they are doing the same thing in Nigeria a
00:07:10huge scale like much larger than i don't larger
00:07:14than imaginable than the in preparing for this program i also read of a
00:07:17company in the US and this was back in the 40s and the 50s they
00:07:21dumped also industrial waste in into the
00:07:25nagara false area and then in the 50
00:07:29sold uh this piece of land again not for one
00:07:33gilder but for one dollar yeah to the board of
00:07:36education and what happened there is they
00:07:40decided to build a school there. and in the 70s
00:07:44it came forward um that due to rain and the
00:07:47weather all the toxic was started to come
00:07:51upwards and
00:07:52there was a school builder so you know lot of people got sick started dying
00:07:56all these different illnesses and i think that's in the 70s and
00:08:00there was like huge outcry to president carter to you know you
00:08:03have to do something about this so this happened in this in the
00:08:07in the 70s um and then we have the case of kutasaw
00:08:10in 80 85. yeah
00:08:12and obviously in 85 no one really
00:08:15knew what was mean the community didn't know
00:08:19but
00:08:19today still not they
00:08:21were like we're getting a whole refinery to continue yeah
00:08:24well i started to read lot of um researches at the
00:08:28karmabi yeah um also uh there were like two
00:08:32papers um that stroke me
00:08:35um and there were investigations in what is the
00:08:39source or the reason that so... many people
00:08:43on kur get cancer so like it was huge
00:08:46percentage and one of this
00:08:49research said um
00:08:52oh oh we don't know yeah theoretically it
00:08:56could be the refinery but that won't be the case
00:09:00here um no explanation why
00:09:04it won't be the case here oh it probably because these
00:09:08weird people here eat this very strange food from
00:09:12venezuela. they eat
00:09:13a corn pudding
00:09:17and they eat it hot, who eats their pudding hot?
00:09:21that's probably the cause of cancer in the 60s,
00:09:25and then there was this other research, same about the
00:09:29same time, um, also about
00:09:33what's the reason, what's the cause of all these illnesses
00:09:36here? oh, oh, it's probably it's just the
00:09:40race, it's the black people. really yes, also this was
00:09:44also voiced in the 60's, yes, and it's both um
00:09:47connected to the university in Groningen, in the
00:09:50Netherlands, and you know, it's science, so when
00:09:54there's this research and this conclusion, then it's fact,
00:09:58right? yeah, you have to do another research and come with other
00:10:01conclusions, and before that, the the first thing is fact,
00:10:05and today still people are like, oh yeah, this pudding is not good for
00:10:08you, it's crazy talks, it's crazy, yes,
00:11:04Kada bês mi tra riba un auto, mi ta korra riba mi famia y é família e
00:11:08kliente, pesei mi ta hasi mi maior esfuerso pa é auto keda
00:11:11bon. Desdi 1983, Jr. Center su prioridadi ta pa
00:11:15brinda siguridadi riba kaminda, ku tairan internasionalmenti
00:11:19sertifika na prejus pa pueblo. Mi nombre ta Franklin Romero,
00:11:23mi ta orgulhosu di trata bo auto (
00:11:29Duna bu kasa sentidu di freskura ku solamente yerba artificial
00:11:32di JR auto center, nos supplier
00:11:36responsable a instalar tur estadionan
00:11:39olimpiku na aquí ta
00:11:40Beijing. obtenibel
00:11:44kalidad aki E na Aruba, ofresí pabu door di JR autocenter, for di
00:11:48diferente tipo di yerba segun é nisisidadi ki bo ten.
00:11:52Duna bu kasas y sentidu di freskura.
00:14:16and everything that they couldn't do about it and we find ourselves
00:14:20aruba and I'm sure you came here to the art fair
00:14:23participated. also have refinery and
00:14:27I'm I'm curious as to there was a point where you started to
00:14:31researching aruba as well or will that come
00:14:34a future point um for sure yes um
00:14:38because I I did a whole research in Kurasaw and made an exhibition at
00:14:42Landuis Bloomhof in Kurasaw and we did a
00:14:46whole series of lectures and etc etc
00:14:48and um then um because
00:14:52I did that there this exhibition. I was invited
00:14:56by uh Renvik Geronimo from Aruba to show the
00:15:00series uh from kurasao here on
00:15:03Aruba and also he was like okay you please please also
00:15:07come take a look at Lago uh which I did this week so he showed
00:15:11me around and um and told a lot about the history
00:15:15etc etc um and I
00:15:19actually found out that the waste that is still here
00:15:23around that the old tarpit that was cleaned, there's
00:15:27still a lot of waste over there when you go there um and
00:15:31uh so
00:15:31I collected lot of it and I uh put it
00:15:35behind next to the way. that i have from kurasou, i
00:15:38brought some to to compare, and it it seems to
00:15:42me that it's kind the same, it looks very similar, uh, so
00:15:46i going going to take it home to my studio in Amsterdam, i'm
00:15:50going to test if it's really the same, and i'm planning to make
00:15:54series of paintings in which i combine the waste from
00:15:57kurasal with the waste from aruba to like
00:16:01also compare it in an image, so i'm going to make series of art
00:16:05pieces, yes, and hope to show it, later on uh here
00:16:09on Aruba yeah so that's
00:16:10what i plan to do that's quite interesting think about the exposition in
00:16:14kurasaw at at lanthause bloomh
00:16:17bloomh um how was it received by the community
00:16:21did you get lot of interest uh did
00:16:25um also lot of press so it the exhibition was there for two
00:16:29months and i don't know it's been in so many articles and
00:16:32radio interviews etc etc so it's so many um although
00:16:36it i have ' to say it is really really hard
00:16:40to reach the people that are
00:16:43most vulnerable for the pollution, because this asphalt lake is
00:16:47still there and people think that it's not doing
00:16:51anything, it's not harming anyone right now, but that's not
00:16:55true, it's it's it goes deep in the water and and in
00:16:59in the soil and um it's
00:17:03damping so it's it's really hot because it's it's a huge black field
00:17:07it's It's the size of I don't 50 football fields or so 50
00:17:11foot soccer fields oh wow so it's it's
00:17:14big um and when it gets hot it
00:17:18damps so when you walk around there within like half an hour
00:17:22or so you get headache you get really sick
00:17:25um uh and dizzy and and nauseous
00:17:28and um I experienced
00:17:32brain fog and I can imagine when you live there and you have this
00:17:36brain folk all the time. "you don't know how it is when you don't have the
00:17:39brain fog. wait, and how long were you in contact with this and you already had
00:17:43brain fog? half an hour or so. okay, yes. did did
00:17:47you also do research in terms of illnesses? did you get
00:17:51that far or did you talk to people that research on the
00:17:55illnesses? there is no research.
00:17:58right now there is no, nothing,
00:18:02just we know that there was a really high risk of cancer when the
00:18:06refinery was still open. but
00:18:08you know um um effects on the
00:18:12brain you do not know mean
00:18:16you don't know yeah so and brain folk when you
00:18:20experience brainfk all the time then you don't know that your experience
00:18:24in it because you don't know any better right yeah so that's what's
00:18:27going on there right now and and it's i don't know mean
00:18:31obviously you were able to tell that something's not right with you but you think
00:18:35the people that are living there are just thinking is the way life is, i think so, yes,
00:18:39and did, i started to organize tours for
00:18:43the visitors of my exhibition, so i brought many people to the asphalt lake,
00:18:46so we actually were breaking in with many people, and you
00:18:53no, no, only the very last time, which was a little bit on purpose, because
00:18:57um,
00:18:57then i um, told the evening before on the
00:19:01radio that i was going to do that on
00:19:03that and that time, and then the director was waiting for us, the
00:19:06director of... of buskabai and buskabai is like the um
00:19:10the env like the the the entity yes the entity the organization
00:19:14it's it's an um it's from the government yeah
00:19:18um and he was waiting for me he's the director and he was a little bit angry and
00:19:22i was like oh i'm so nice to meet you and he's actually
00:19:26kind um and then um
00:19:29i got to talk with him and he had very weird story which
00:19:33find really hard to believe because he doesn't show any proof.
00:19:37he tells me that he hired
00:19:41um an um company in the US who did
00:19:45research like the soil and the water and also this
00:19:48waste and they gave an advice on how to
00:19:52deal with it and he says that this
00:19:56company advised him to not clean it all but
00:19:59only just the upper layer and then dump garbage
00:20:03top of it um which is a really weird advice i would...
00:20:07say and they also said there was no toxics,
00:20:11oil residue in the water or in the
00:20:14soil um so i was like oh so this is all good news according
00:20:18to this company and then he said yes it's it's is great
00:20:22fine
00:20:22everything and no problem at all so
00:20:24i asked him can you show me the file then i would like i would like to
00:20:28see what they research and and their methods etc and then said no it's
00:20:32a secret so he was a bl just to share
00:20:36general information NBA and it's a secret, so there is
00:20:40apparently good news, but the good news is secret,
00:20:43which I don't know, I have my doubts, and I also
00:20:47told him that I have my doubts about it, and he said, well... do you believe in
00:20:50god? claiming that i should then also believe in
00:20:54him, yeah, which is of course very odd, very odd
00:20:58way to go about things, yes, so i'm not done with that
00:21:01research, and this happened this year, when this week, this
00:21:05week, so there's more to come, there's more to come about that,
00:21:08yes, and tell me as well, coming back
00:21:12to Aruba, because obviously you're here with the art fair
00:21:16and your works are still on display, for the entire month.
00:21:20of uh September, October, this month, this month, so all the way through
00:21:24the end of September, okay, and
00:21:27how was it received here, and did you have
00:21:30conversations with with the community about, yes, um,
00:21:34similar situation here in Aruba, yeah, many people uh
00:21:38were like surprised that this was all going on, um,
00:21:41and because most people don't know, and people started to
00:21:45talk about the situation here, and
00:21:47they asked me, can you please research here as well, which is something that I'm going
00:21:51to do also I spoke with people about like the beginning of this whole
00:21:55series which was in the Netherlands with Tata Steel because I
00:21:59did succeed in getting lot of attention for
00:22:02it um so there were lot of newspapers and
00:22:06television items about the work that I made um
00:22:10and then I started to say in interviews that I
00:22:14thought that the director of Tata Steel should actually buy his own
00:22:17garbage bag meaning he had to buy my part pieces, which
00:22:21he then did, he came by to my exhibition with the whole delegation
00:22:25the factory, and they bought a few
00:22:28pieces, um, and then I was like, oh, that is nice, but it's also
00:22:32kind of a form of green washing right, um, which doesn't
00:22:36help anyone, um, so then I gave him as like
00:22:40a gift with this art
00:22:43pieces, five years every six months,
00:22:47one hour of my time to help him. leave
00:22:51or become a green company and he accepted, so since
00:22:55then we're meeting often um, but after few
00:22:58years I
00:23:00found out, well found out, I just I'm reading everything and and following
00:23:04everything is that they will never be a green or clean company
00:23:08ever, it's not going to happen, which means that they have to
00:23:12leave, and now I'm a part of a group of
00:23:16people and we're trying to actually buy Tata Steel.
00:23:20to make them close down and then build new city and
00:23:24also huge area
00:23:27um uh for new um industry that's actually clean
00:23:31industry to make sure that we can keep all the jobs
00:23:34and um not harming the environment and the
00:23:38health of people um how how far
00:23:42along are you in this process and how did you get more people interested
00:23:45into buying back such such a big.
00:23:50This is yes, it's not my idea, I i just um uh it's an
00:23:54idea of of some other people, it's a collaboration,
00:23:57yes um and um yeah we
00:24:00well we are quite far in all the plants and we
00:24:04are
00:24:05we we are quite far actually yes so I'm very optimistic
00:24:09about it and what was nice is that when I came
00:24:13to cursal I um
00:24:17met uh um Andre Kasimir. we was one
00:24:21the founders of Greentown Curassall which is kind of similar
00:24:24plan for the environment
00:24:27around the refinery the east
00:24:30refinery in Kurasaw um also to make like
00:24:34new industries to create jobs but then a way
00:24:38that's not harming the environment yes so I
00:24:42think that this is like globally a
00:24:45potential solution for because people do need
00:24:49the jobs. people do need industries, but
00:24:53all these heavy industries around the globe are made 100, 150
00:24:57years ago and they are very
00:25:00harmful, but we are so i don't
00:25:04know smart as people, we can we can do so
00:25:08much um when you just pass by
00:25:12any heavy industry factory, it's
00:25:14it's crazy how huge
00:25:20the it is right, it's it's i when you think about... globe. that people designed this whole factory and they
00:25:24made it work and it's it's like magic, so if if
00:25:28we as human beings can build that, we can also
00:25:31build something that's not harmful, and it's actually
00:25:35bringing us things that we need, bringing
00:25:38us, I don't,
00:25:42healthy planet, um, so I i'm
00:25:46really for that,
00:25:48so I try to make like series of series on
00:25:49around places that have like
00:25:53similar
00:25:54situations
00:25:59and doesn't really matter if factories are still open. closing
00:26:03right now or just closed, it's it's
00:26:07similar, and we need a solution for all these
00:26:10places, well the government of Aruba mentioned that they are
00:26:14not interested in in in reopening the refinery or
00:26:18anything that has to do with part of that, so if they
00:26:22do find or if there comes another organization that is willing
00:26:25to you know clean or become make it into
00:26:29a or remove the whole pollution that
00:26:33happened that would be a great uh development
00:26:37so yeah and you saw a little bit of that in kudas out so people trying yeah
00:26:41yeah and and made new deal with the CEO of Tata
00:26:44Steel which is that um uh we
00:26:48both have like um so in the upcoming
00:26:52five or six years or so he is going from
00:26:56being a problem to being a solution
00:26:59whatever the solution may be if it's a green fact. three or closing
00:27:03down, it's it's going to be closing down, yeah, we know right now, but
00:27:07um, and then he's going to hand a blueprint of
00:27:11how he got there, that's that's the deal we made, so this
00:27:15blueprint I can use to make like a hand out to all
00:27:18these places in the world with the same
00:27:21situations, so we can, I don't, if we have solution
00:27:25like the key to what can we do, we can all use the same key,
00:27:29right, to, and and do you see? do you work with
00:27:33other similar activists around the globe that have the same focus
00:27:37that maybe not with art but a different
00:27:40way do research and try to bring forward
00:27:43solutions or way to overcome this because you you bring it
00:27:47forward, mean i see your art and i saw it in st nicholas
00:27:50that you know you use them environmental ways or the
00:27:54not sorry the toxic waves into art, have you seen
00:27:58others do something different with it and also try to come up? with
00:28:02solutions, no, and there's no network, so maybe that could be
00:28:06something, no, yeah, well actually, I we were just mentioning Aaron Brukovic,
00:28:10so I just two weeks ago met this journalist and she is working with
00:28:14Aron Brukovic for a while, Aron brukovic is now very much focused on
00:28:18data centers in the US, um, and
00:28:22this exactly is what she said to me, she said, oh, I
00:28:25know few people around the globe, like four or five
00:28:29people who are doing kind of similar things. and I'm going to
00:28:33make a network and connect you, so this is just
00:28:36happening, I
00:28:46up um uh, I know you after now you've been a solo
00:28:50ranger, advocating, doing research,
00:28:54working with all these um, you know different entities, both
00:29:25see myself and what about working with universities or education,
00:29:28do give lectures and stuff but also to motivate so we can't do
00:29:32this, i am sure, i'm very optimistic in the
00:29:36possibilities um, but you have to do it right, so that
00:29:39if there's a possibility doesn't mean that people actually are going to do it, so
00:29:43go on, go on, it's
00:29:49your your collection that you made from the
00:29:53industrial waste in kur, how many, how many pieces did you sell, do you
00:29:57know who you sold it to, maybe could this be a way to
00:30:00start, yes, well i um, I sell
00:30:48empezamos con los nuevos datos que van a...