Deliberations is an online work that utilizes Microsoft Excel features such as power query and conditional formatting to pull real time weather, air quality, and lighting condition updates from Environment Canada, as well as information regarding observable cosmic events from other sources and consolidates this data into a visual dashboard. Forecasting local conditions for the next 24 hours, Sarnia, Ontario is situated at the center of a predictive ritual that assigns a risk level but obscures other values. Spreadsheet data becomes a testimony to the harsh impacts of Chemical Valley; a term the locals use to identify the industrial conglomerate of petrochemical refineries situated on the south end of the city that encircles Aamijiwnaang First Nation. Changes in conditions such as air quality demonstrate the harms committed against the land and its residents in the name of corporate interest, while obscurity within the excel workbook highlights the lack of transparency within industry reporting processes. When we consider the surrounding of and continued encroachment on Chippewa lands through expansion projects and the releasing of chemicals into the environment, the situation begins to take the form of a corporate-industrial siege that poisons both land and bodies in its imperial efforts. The legitimacy granted to corporate interests by the state is ignored when strictly forecasting weather and atmospheric data, thus the corporation becomes an unidentified source of danger. Through delegitimization and ambiguity, the corporation becomes an entity which can be subject to challenge in order to provoke dialogues regarding the past, present, and future state of the petrochemical industry.
**The back-end of deliberations is currently being hosted at Union Gallery in Kingston, Ontario. By granting public access to the spreadsheet, existing power dynamics are subverted through increased transparency and opportunities to engage in digital interventions.**