Porous Archives: A Parable of soils, airs, waters, and bodies.

Porous Archives: A Parable of soils, airs, waters and bodies explores how soil, air and water function as active archives of industrial and cultural transformation rather than passive backgrounds to human life. Using Robert Clark Kedzie’s Shadows from the Walls of Death (1874) and its arsenic-laden wallpapers as a historical case, the text traces how matter extracted from the earth is transformed into commodities, dispersed through domestic interiors and urban environments, and ultimately embodied. Drawing on feminist and political ecology, the article argues that architectural and urban practice must confront these porous, toxic legacies as ethical and historical terrains requiring care, accountability and repair.