Latent Accumulations

Residual and in-between solid and fluid—paraffin pollution is a recurring concern in coastal environments, yet one that is inherently difficult to detect and classify. The interdisciplinary project Latent Accumulations traces the elusive activity of paraffin in the context of spillage and debris accumulation on the Baltic coast of the Curonian Spit in Lithuania, a UNESCO World Heritage Site adjacent to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Positioned at the intersection of environmental media studies and environmental design, Latent Accumulations brings together perspectives from environmental and energy humanities, feminist spatial practices, and design. By conducting site-specific research into the material paraffin, the project examines the uncertainty surrounding its emergence and origins, pointing to local extractive industries and broader oil infrastructures.

As a waxy substance derived from the industrial process of refining crude oil, paraffin is an energy material that is ostensibly inert, but »upsetting« in its infinite plasticity and movement. Initially distilled in chemistry as a delicate white precipitate and characterized by »strange indifference«, paraffin wax is the ultimate residue—either spontaneously deposited or made by purifying what was left behind. Contrary to the early scientific impulses of separation and purification, it ended up being everywhere—mixed up with materials, things and bodies in the environment, often in irreversible ways. Paraffin can be deemed an »unobject«, unsettled in its materiality due to its changing phases. It is precisely the process of phase transition that gives rise to paraffin’s uncertain ontological status, emerging both from the deep past of petroleum formation and in sudden pollution events.

Latent Accumulations unfolds through fieldwork that connects material investigations with local knowledges and methodological experimentation in the shifting landscapes on the Curonian Spit. It gathers voices from witnesses to these changes and those who maintain this environment, asking: What tools and forms of public engagement can be conceived for studying contaminants at thresholds between land and sea? How to collaboratively engage with materials that are themselves in motion, recognizing their traces as indices of larger ecological and geopolitical tensions? By considering phase transition as integral to environmental concerns, the project examines the latency and persistence of residues in ways that tell us more about the present and future politics of material mixtures.

Publications

Perraudin, L., Rešetar, I. 2026. »Latent Accumulations«. In Matters of Activity, edited by Mareis, C., Ott, C., Werner, B. Basel: Birkhäuser (forthcoming).

Subevents