Caroline Ektander
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Caroline Ektander is a Swedish architect, curator, and environmental humanities researcher working at the intersection of artistic research, feminist technoscience, and critical spatial theory. Her practice-based research brings artistic and scientific practices into dialogue under Toxic Commons, an ongoing inquiry into the elusive and complex dynamics of toxicity and the structures that sustain it. Through public-facing and multimodal formats—including film, graphic novels, exhibition-making, art commissions, and various educational formats—she creates spaces in which environmental conditions, often entangled and ambivalent, can be encountered, discussed, and negotiated in situated ways.
As part of this research trajectory, Ektander’s practice-based PhD, Toxic Commons – Transmediating Permanent Pollution(Bauhaus University Weimar, 2026), develops a curatorial inquiry into how industrial clean-up actively participates in the reproduction of toxic commons. Through sustained, and collaborative artistic research in the extracted landscapes of former East Germany that today appear clean or restored, the project traces how environmental harm persists through shifting regimes of visibility, challenging dominant narratives of purity and progress.
Ektander has written, lectured, and taught widely on toxicity, pollution, and environmental justice, with publications in Environmental Humanities (Duke University Press), and contributions to special issues of Lagoonscape: The Venice Journal of Environmental Humanities, Urban Studies (SAGE), and HUB -Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society. Her PhD research has been fully supported by the Thüringer Graduiertenförderung (3+1 years), while her artistic and curatorial projects have received additional support from the Andrea von Braun Stiftung and, on multiple occasions, the Kreativfonds at Bauhaus University Weimar. In 2022, she was co-recipient, together with artist Stephan Thierbach, of the tandem stipend Landschaft als Ort der Transformation, issued by the German Environment Agency (UBA) in collaboration with the Bauhaus Foundation and OSTEN Festival.
Ektander is a co-founder of the art-science platform Toxic Commons (2018–), together with Antonia Alampi (Spore Initiative), Prof. Simone Müller (University of Augsburg), and the Hazardous Travels research cluster (Ayushi Dhawan, Maximilian Feichtner, and Jonas Stuck). She also collaborates on documentary film projects that critically engage scientific knowledge with her partner, Hendrik Loebbert, through Nonfiction Society.
Recent / upcoming
Mediating Alterlife in the Special issue: Temporalities of Urban Nature Eds,
Mathilda Rosengren & Lucilla Barchetta in Urban Studies Journal
Subterranean Reverberations in the special issue: Cracking the Surface: Flows Between Above and Below Ground Eds, Simone Müller & Livia Cahn in Lagoonscape Venice Journal of Environmental Humanties
CV
2025
Toland, Alexandra. Ektander, Caroline. Jasper, Sandra. “Mediating Alterlife: Arts-based research on the ecological labour of plant succession at a contaminated site in Bitterfeld-Wolfen” Urban Studies Journal special issue: Temporalities of Urban Natures. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980251383781
2025
Ektander, Caroline.”Subterranean Reverberations and the Horror of the Chemical Sublime” Lagoonscapes special issue: Cracking the surface : flows between above and below ground” http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2025/01/005
2025
Ektander, Caroline. Rossée, Carlina, Al-Qaisi, Jasmina. “The Black Triangle: Commoning Borderland Coal Ecologies” HUB Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society https://doi.org/10.22501/hub.2806768
2023
Ektander, Caroline. Stuck, Jonas. “Redistribute Toxicity : An Artistic Intervention into the legacy of the German Toxic Waste Trade.” Environmental Humanities Duke press Volume 16:2 https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-10746012
2026
Ektander, C. (forthcoming). Der Schweiß der Erde (Sweat of the Earth): On Memory and the Entanglements with Land. In Vaage, N. S. Bauer, S. & Münster, D. (Eds.), Liveable Soils through Technologies of Care: Rethinking Remediation in the Anthropocene. Leuven University Press.
2022
Ektander, C.“How to live with Toxicity” in Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau. Bittner, R. Errázuriz, M. Rattalino, E. & Shedde, S. (Eds.) Vegetation under Power, Bauhaus Taschenbuch 29: 74-76
2022
Ektander, C.“Do We Live in Heritage?” in Show Hidden Objects, Jour Fixe: Neuwerk Magazine 9: 109-117
2021
Interview with Toxic Commons: All in This Toxic Mess Together. With Dhawan, A. Ektander, C. Mueller, S. Finesso, A. & Klassen, L. Soapbox Journal, 2.0 CONTAMINATION: 217-236
2019
Ektander, C. ‘Disrupting Toxic Narratives – in Order to Find Space to Act’, in Alampi, A. (Eds.) Deadly Affairs, Extra City Cahier 5: 34-44
2025
Talk: Toxic commons Reclaim Air Symposium Current Festival, Stuttgart
2025
Talk: Transmediation at Sensing the Environment workshop, Environmental Humanties Hub, KTH, Stockholm
2024
Lecture performance together with Artist Anna Zett Dragon Burrow/Drachenbau, OSTEN Festival
2024
Performance panel The Black Triangle at Leakage Conference, TU Dresden
2023
Keynote conversation 'Misplacing matter? Vertical practices and (hi)stories of space and power', with Livia Cahn and Simone Müller, Augsburg University
2023
Tandem lecture with Prof.Simone Müller 'The Distribution of Environmental Burdens - On the local and global pathways of toxicity' Global Challenges Lecture Series, Darmstadt Technical University
2023
Talk 'Transmediating Toxicity' at Seminar series 'Shared Wastelands' European Media Studies, Potsdam
2023
Talk 'Toxic Commons' together with Mia Yu, Fluid Toxicity, Floating University
2022
Tandem lecture with Prof.Alexandra Toland 'Himmel im Boden' Lecture series 'Down to earth', TU Dresden
2021
Talk 'Toxic Legacies', Chemical (Re)Actions, Goethe Institute, Chicago
2021
Talk 'Toxicity and Breath at 'Vegetation under power'' Symposium, BAUHAUS Stiftung Dessau
2020
Moderator of interdisciplinary panel 'Oceans and Waste', Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig
2020
Talk 'Redistribute Toxicity' at seminar series 'Hidden Flows - the production of invisible Territories', Royal Academy of Fine Art, Copenhagen
2020
Talk 'Toxicity' at 'TOXIC! Symposium', HEAD Genève, Geneva
2019
Talk 'The impossibility of an Island', Deadly Affairs Public Program, Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerpen