Chemical Occupations: Anti-Colonial Reactions in the Desert

Issam Azzam (MLA I/MUP ’25)

“Chemical Occupations” examines how landscape architects can disassemble traditional ecological principles of growth, succession, and restoration to reconfigure landscape through chemical agency. It positions toxic landscapes, not merely as disturbed sites awaiting an idyllic fix, but rather as uncontained, reactive, and existing through multiple states of matter. 

In Fayoum, an oasis in the Sahara Desert, layers of occupation have toxified the landscape far beyond the presence of its original colonial agents. Here, ecology is co-opted as the final act of the colonial “exquisite corpse,” as a device to delineate and falsely restore through the foreign typology of the national park. Sets of chemical chromatograms, prioritized over Cartesian ecological tools, serve as a methodology to unveil, dissolve, and reconfigure the toxic residues of the former park. “Chemical Occupations” advances the “anti-park,” myths of reactive sovereignty, actualized through new rituals, markers, and stewardship practices, whereby Fayoumis reclaim toxicity toward new futures.