Samenvatting

When a human Body is confronted with toxic substances it has an immediate reaction. This first reaction was recently verbalised by a friend of mine, who happens to be an artist and was exposed to toxic steams in her studio; when she recognised the physical effects she immediately felt: “Oh my good- I have to run away!” So if we should run away from Toxins, why are we so fascinated by them and even sometimes deliberately consume them? I am not only talking about drugs that help our body and conscious to a different kind of perception of time and space, or toxic steams that make us run away, or Botox that represents a part of an idea of beauty, vitality and its industry. I am referring to Toxicity like the theorist Mel Chen – as a figure of thought, as we will explore shortly (Chen 2011). So instead of running away I would like to invite you - and Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz are my partners in crime here – to go towards the Toxic and explore its potentials as well as its obstacles. I would also like to emphasise, that I consider my following elaborations as a proposition and set of questions rather then a finished argument.