Léa Perraudin and Iva Rešetar: Latent Accumulations

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.

Latent Accumulations is a project by environmental media scholar Léa Perraudin and architect Iva Rešetar based at Matters of Activity at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In a site-specific research process in the shifting landscapes of the Curonian Spit in Lithuania, they trace the elusive activities of paraffin spillage and accumulation on the Baltic coast adjacent to the Russian border. Their exhibition and roundtable at Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin opens up environmental concerns of paraffin pollution to questions of phase transition, material memory and residues, through transdisciplinary practices of witnessing, collecting and maintaining.

Latent Accumulations draws on encounters with paraffin in the contested natural reserve of Curonian Spit, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, during a research residency at Nida Art Colony. While the source of paraffin pollution in this environment remains unclear, it is linked to the extensive cargo traffic of crude oil and its local extractive industries. Paraffin can be deemed an »unobject«, unsettled in its materiality due to its changing phases. Rešetar and Perraudin argue that it is precisely this process of phase transition that gives rise to its uncertain ontological status—between solid and liquid, and emerging both from the deep past of petroleum formation and in sudden pollution events.

Connecting material research with local experiences and memories of the shifting grounds between sea and land and within geopolitical and conservation buffer zones, the exhibition prompts questions: How can such materials be studied at thresholds as they move and transition, troubling temporal and spatial orders? Documented in video and sound by Anna Luise Schubert, the methodological approach of walking was pursued to examine and collect paraffin residues collaboratively. It gathers voices and knowledges from witnesses to these changes and those who maintain the environment, in ways that tell us more about the present and future politics of material mixtures.

Through three provocations, the exhibition features material samples, video documentation, and fragments of conversation: A material is never alone—stable, isolated—it is part of the processes of world-making, surrounded by industrial infrastructures and ongoing communal cleanup efforts. Water decides what and when a material is—concerns currents as crucial actors in the frictional border regime, emphasizing what is in motion, and always dealt with after the fact. Conducting research at thresholds calls for patchiness in storytelling—highlighting an ongoing search that invites knowledge to unfold through the senses and speculations of many.

The roundtable approaches materials at thresholds from different disciplinary positions in environmental media, architecture, design, curatorial practice, and materials science, with participants Alice Jarry (Concordia, Montreal)
, Egija Inzule (Nida Art Colony of VAA), Peter Fratzl (MPICI, Potsdam), Rafico Ruiz (CCA, Montreal)
, Iva Rešetar and 
Léa Perraudin (MoA, HU Berlin) and moderation by Yoonha Kim (inherit, HU Berlin).

Iva Rešetar is an architect researching fluid and marginalized materials, and the histories and aesthetic practices of thermodynamics in the context of environmental design.

Léa Perraudin is an environmental media scholar investigating materials and infrastructures at thresholds through speculative methodologies and queer feminist STS.

Latent Accumulations is a guest exhibition as part of muddy measures. when wetlands and heritage converse by the Centre for Advanced Studies “inherit, heritage in transformation”. The project is conducted at the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin as part of the __matter Festival 2025 and is pursued in collaboration with Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts.