A spoken-word symphony of Unseen Voices is at the heart of the UNSEEN art installation. Each one brings a unique personal story about a period in their life when they lived in a toxic place in Niagara County and how they were and continue to be affected by this.
Unseen would not exist without these stories.
Ursula Zimmerman, Niagara County resident, pointing out on a map where she lived in Niagara Falls during her Unseen Interview.
Who are the Unseen Voices?
I interviewed 18 people from Niagara County, most of which who have never shared their personal story before in any significant way. I started by interviewing family and friends before the web of people grew outward. It took almost a year to do all the interviews, and the more I told people about the project, the more people would come forward and want to share their story. It almost seemed like flood gates had opened to endless amounts of stories, which spoke to the scale of the problem.
Some of the people I interviewed were part of the original Love Canal Lawsuits and were evacuated from their home in the late 1970’s. They continue to feel the repercussions today. I interviewed one person who lived there in the 60’s well before it broke out in the news that it was toxic. And I interviewed a few people who lived there recently or still do. And some of these people are part of new Love Canal lawsuits. What I found by listening to stories from several decades are that they all experience/d the same issues, regardless of the specific decade.
Love Canal is the most famous of the toxic areas of Niagara County, so it is where I started my interview process. But I also wanted to capture stories from many of the lesser known toxic places which are spotted all over. Some of the people are from the numbered streets off Buffalo Avenue near the Chemical factories, some live in rural Ransomville and Balmer near the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works, which has a massive store of Manhattan Project radioactive waste. Some of the people went to school at Lewiston-Porter which also sits next to the Manhattan Project waste, and some people were even sent to school on top of the Manhattan Project waste site more clearly known as the Niagara Falls Storage Site.
Luella Kenny, former Niagara County resident, and long time environmental activist.
Recording Interviews
Most of the people have lived in the region for their entire life, although a few have moved out of state to escape the area. I traveled back to WNY several times to perform the interviews. I also traveled to Boston, Massachusetts and to a small town outside of Houston, Texas.
Artist Chantal Calato in her NYC studio charting out the interview themes.
Editing Audio
I had so many hours of recorded interviews that each listen took over 20 hours. At first it was so much information that I needed a way to organize it in my head. I started to chart all of the themes that I saw recurring in the various stories. Smells, pets illnesses, cancer, toxic dumping were some of the themes that repeated over and over. But this framework was not enough to edit the soundscape into something powerful. I then spent a solid 9 months listening to the interviews over and over again. Each listen through was painfully sad, but the only real way for me to fully absorb what I was hearing. These are not just themes and stories, these are real lives.
Carmen Hamilton, former Niagara County resident being interviewed for UNSEEN.
What I learned
The stories sound eerily similar across all the decades. It makes you question whether we have made any progress.
Every time I speak about the project someone reveals that they themselves or someone close to them has a story to share. The problem is vast when you actually start talking to people about it.
Most people think their health problems or smells in the air are “normal” until they start speaking to their neighbors.
With all that is going on in the world right now these 18 UNSEEN voices show us the strength and resilience of humans in the face of great challenges.
THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU WHO SHARED YOUR STORY
Nora Sturtevant Bouvier
Barb Calato
Joe Calato (Father)
Joe Calato (Brother)
Kim Carella
David Ellsworth
Carmen Hamilton
Nancy Duffy Hanover
Patrick A. Jensen
Luella Puccetti Kenny
Nancy Kulack
Cynthia Mikula
Betty O’Brien
Meaghann O’Brien
Kathleen Pagkos
Mario Passero
Michael Zimmerman
Ursula Zimmerman