he term «extractivism» commonly describes an economy that is based on the mining of raw materials, which, in the system of planetary division of labor, are then usually processed elsewhere and often sold back to the original territory with much higher prices. That which is extracted — commodities, energy, labor, especially that performed by Black or Indigenous bodies — has been and often still is thereby understood as a homogeneous and measurable resource that can be exploited until it is exhausted. The multiple relations – historical, aesthetical and cosmological – established between that which is extracted, those who extract and the territory are often destroyed, erased and/or forgotten.
The workshop aims to explore the aesthetics of extractivism, be it in innovative representation of extractivism in art, in recent critical studies about the presence of extractive industry in modern and contemporary literature, film, plays, or installations (José Miguel Wisnik), but also considering the concept of aesthetics understood from its root in the Greek word aisthesis: as sensuous perception or «sensuous cognition» (Baumgarten). We want to explore what sensual relation to the world underlies extractivism and how it shapes and generates that which is and can be perceived as «world.» In the «Extractive Zones» in Latin America (Macarena Gómez-Barris) — often on indigenous land or land inhabited by quilombos — extractivism is experienced sensuously (Ailton Krenak), it changes or destroys sensual approaches to the world and the cosmologies that go along with them (Davi Kopenawa). In turn, when resources are depleted, extractivism leaves behind altered landscapes and social fabrics that must confront the «trauma of deindustrialization» (Mary Dudley). The way extractivism shapes liveworlds historically has determinated many aspects of conviviality in Latin America: The living together often takes places in environments strongly shaped by infrastructures designated to transport commodities elsewhere. Extractivism also produces blatant inequalities concerning health, security and live expectancy of humans and non-humans: The equipment of some models of life causes the damage or even destruction of others. Finally, we want to discuss to what extent artistic strategies can deal with the aesthetics of extractivism.
PANEL 1 | 21.11 (Tuesday)
Jörn Etzold (Mecila Senior Fellow, Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Remnants of Extractivism: The Ruhr Area
Fernanda Pitta (Universidade de São Paulo)
Práticas Extrativistas dentro e fora de Museus
Flavia Pinheiro Meireles (Mecila Thematic Research Group, CEFET-Rio de Janeiro)
Strengthening its Threads on Earth: Indigenous Artistic Practices
Astrid Ulloa (Mecila Associated Investigator, Universidad Nacional de Colombia)
Epistemologías Territoriales frente a las Estéticas de la Desposesión, La Guajira, Colombia [Online]
Chair: Tilmann Heil (Mecila Postdoctoral Investigator, Universität zu Köln)
More information at: https://mecila.net/es/evento/aesthetics-of-extractivism
So before before we start I just just wanted to make a very special uh thank you to Fernanda P this has also been a this has also been like the development of a nice surprise as I said Yan and I have been developing the program for a while and it pays off
Because then you get to know people it’s it’s very nice uh we wanted to to invite Lucas bomboi who’s who had an excellent Exposition here very close at the Mark solastalgia it’s this New Concept by an Australian philosopher it’s a Nostalgia that happens uh when when the landscape
Changes because of of of many many many things and Fernanda was the cator of this Exposition and then we were in contact and then we’ve discovered her own research which she will also present today some bits I think so thank you very much for for for being here just wanted to
Say well good afternoon everybody Tois Tois to I just continue where you left off and I wanted to also welcome um all the three speakers of this panel and in particular welcome Fernand Peter who is a art historian and assistant professor at the Museum of Contemporary Arts of the University of sa
Paulo she’s a huge experience and um in the relation of research and museums and in museums and um the uh making of Expos uh exhibitions she’s currently a project leader um for the Brazil team of the Decay project funded by the Rees Bank in new Williamsville she has been a um a
Fellow for the fby which is the local funding agency and had held various other fellowships around the globe really including Norway she’s been a senior Cur um curator of the Pinot s Paulo curated several exhibitions there most recently nobody would have believed it Alain COA and 10 contemporary artists
She also worked as a cerial um coordinator of vexa we know curated by Nina Tera and I could name many others she has really passed through many um really relevant institutions so welcome our second um person that I want to present very briefly since we have guests here also
Is Flav melis she is a a senior fellow of missil sematic fellow um this year of misila and an artist and Professor for ethnic racial relations at a graduate program of the federal Center of technological education in Rio de Janeiro she holds a PhD in communication and culture from
The federal University of Rio De Janeiro as well she was a visiting um before joining missil she was a visiting fellow of the center for transforming sexuality and gender at the UN University of Brighton equally she has um a large range of research um interests in Latin America abala politics of race gender
And sexuality in the Arts and counter Colonial and decolonial feminism I also skipped the um Publications here but welcome also to you and last but not least our first speaker um Jan etal is Professor for theater studies at H University bom and Senior fellow of misila this year he has
Published very widely on situationist International B Balter Benjamin and frish hin on layers of Theater history figuration and chorus political and anti-political theater his most recent interests were in theater and performance in post-industrial environments Aesthetics of infrastructure and the relations between theater performance and law he’s currently a pi of the research training
Group The Dem um the documentary access and pration both based at Ru University it’s great pleasure also to have you here at the panel the three presenters will speak one after the other each for 20 to 25 minutes on the topics that named in the program and I
Hand the word over to you um and Y before I do that though one last remark as you OA was in the program also unfortunately for health reasons she can’t join us neither in present nor online and we wish her um well that she gets better soon so that explains why
We’re shter and so we try to end at 4:30 anyways okay thank you thank you for the introduction to thank everybody for for the nice words thanks Michelle for being here and of course thank you Thomas because I have to say we are like conceiving this together but he did most
Of the work it’s just like that he was writing all the emails and uh so this um it’s been a great pleasure it’s not been a great pleasure to work with you because you did all the work but it’s been a great pleasure to how get out of
This to do this together and I’m very grateful that you also took so many of the organizational um issues here um okay today I will not speak about the Russell tribunals or the permanent people’s Tri I’m working on here miss CA but about the region I will go back to
Shortly I didn’t expect one of our deputies not M I live in vitten but one of our deputies here this is very this is really funny coincidence the ru Area North R West failure Lake [Laughter] yeah beautiful city in Germany it’s a former coal mining area and of course we can discuss
If the term extractivism um is appropriate when talking about a region in Western Europe where a lot of things are different from Latin America where the term extractivism was has been coined I will a bit address this differences however also in the ru area the large scale extraction of raw
Material altered Landscapes and irreversibly changed the existing social relations and invented others I tend to believe civia fedich V she states and kalian and the witch that the method of capitalist control domination extraction of bodies and all the other Goods of the Earth have been applied to Europe and
The Americas in the same movement and that parts of the pr capitalist social Fabric in Europe might not have been that different from what the colonizers found sometimes idealized or often demonized in the Americas or Pier clra who describes ethnos sdes first with an example of the extension of the state of
France to the L dog those examples are long ago but still all also in Europe we have we have uh different regions with very different um very different social structures and uh Europe is not only does not only consist of of metropolis like Berlin or Frankfurt there are lot
Of other regions where also today extractivism still takes place and from the beginning uh of the of the conquista a lot of Carl the F credit was paid with the mining license in Spain and so on so this also has its history in Europe um in any case when commodity extraction
Left or when it moved on or away from the ru um it left altered Landscapes and a social fabric that had had and still has to confront what Mary dley called the trauma of Des deindustrialization especially I’m interested in the role of arts and Aesthetics in a larger sense here in two
Ways on the one hand former sites of coal mining and seal production are since the 1919s transformed into museums theaters concert Halls what is the role of art here on the other side when deprived from the former function the remance of extractivism can be perceived in a different way no they can maybe
Tell us something about the relation to the world inherent extractivism about the drive that fuels it the desires fears and assumptions that can make it happen and here I will sketch very briefly and try to shorten it I’m afraid I’m still a little too
Long at the end of we have a look if everybody’s still on board and that I how much I have to shorten on on the go um so I will sketch briefly some thoughts that bring together Cornelio cadas theory of a social imaginary with the theory of artistic
Volition it’s inter invented by aloise Regal and then developed by Willam vinger and of course valter Benjamin so first the ru area what’s the ru area it’s an artificial landscape of settlements and post-industrial nature in the Far Western part of Germany it’s here over there pburg ESS on the left
Dortmund the area there large areas of the region were essentially rural until the 19th century where an expansion of the coal and Steel Industries around 1900 1890 caused a steep rise in population HED cities including gzen Kirin and overhaus mushroomed with infrastructure coming later on just like
Here in the suburb of sa Pao as described by Teresa Caldera in city of wals large numbers of workers in the Region’s minds and pits came from what was then polish part of Prussia and they were German citizens so they were also quite well paid but also suffered
Discrimination as a result but still formed the social tissue of the rural area their descendants lot of people there have Polish names the era has always been governed from Beyond its own borders it never formed a political Unity its name Ru area Ru region Rab in German
Is therefore more or less unofficial and used by several institutions more or less close to the now pictures here’s the ru area again now the pictures River that’s the ru for which it was named Beautiful the river forms this forms the region south of B where the mining began
And it was there that the as it was there that the cold could be found on the surface and most easily accessed the load becomes deeper as one progresses North a that the through the mining industry northward Over time however that River then transverses the huge
Mines and pits in the north is not the ru but the MSHA so we can also speak of the mire region and this how it looks like now just some photos I mean I had to take photos I had on my on my computer while I was here this is but
This is I think this is Han I think this is it is H so the Two Rivers play different roads the ru has always served the Region’s need for fresh water more or less well considering no living being could be found in it around the turn turn of the
20th century a huge infrastructure of barrier leges in the hinterland was built to ensure water supply the M contrast has been the Region’s gutter unstable soil and ground instability from the mines made underground pipelines impr practical so sewage was pumped directly into the river is the m today
Uh crossed by a by by a canal um after the re um naturalization as you say in German as yet as early as 1958 coold tips in the ru area began to fill up due to a lack of demand an early sign of the impeding impending coal crisis the year
1963 saw 13 pits closed and 10,000 miners dismissed the new sources of energy were oil and nuclear power the ru region of the 19 century was a a society in which men did dangerous work in groups and had to look after one another simply to survive they also did so with
The help of animals Canary Birds fainted before them and warned them of deadly carbon monoxide Co miners were trained and well organized and they had the power to switch off the energy Supply that emerging modern societies depended upon as Timothy Mitchell argues the threat of energy shutdown gave workers
The Leverage to fight for their rights and in a larger sense enabled Mass democracy in the first place it’s the book carbon democracy which is in places where workers had the power to switch off energy the work of the miners for example was also partly fueled by shagar
From Brazil and here it was much more difficult to turn off the switch from one moment to another in the moment meantime women usually stayed at home took care of the children and the elderly grew vegetables and raised goats in their Garden while the remainder of the time was spent
Looking out of the window the European steel and coal and Steel Community because of what now is the European Union was uh funded after the second world war to prevent other Wars to come but also as so according to Mitchell to create a greater Co market and reduce
National Co unities unions abilities to strike the market is European and so the the national unions have L power the SoCal Marshall Plan officially the European recovery program enabled the race of an oilbased economy this oil was extracted in the Middle East and in other areas with a much lesser
Concentration of population around the extraction sites reducing the risk of a generous strike and Hance the need for democracy to nearly zero the same went for nuclear energy hence according to Mitchell the name of the game was no longer democracy but economy new lify Lifestyles aimed at
Consuming as much oil as possible had to be invented demand for cars motor Cycles youth culture Cosmetics rock music tourism new gender roles here’s the exhibition uh a friend of mine or colleague of M made on oil and on wburg uh Beauty and horror of the of the age
Of Patrol photo by William eglon you see the airplanes and the drink has Al also some some uh looks like oil new infrastructures had to be built highways to other suburbs the lifestyle that the French call Metro you live outside in the suburbs you come to work nobody
Cared about global warming and energy never seemed in short supply it was only in 72 that the club of Rome issued the famous limit to growth the report on the danger of exponential economic and population growth with AFF finate supply of resources the oil crisis the first
Oil Crisis began in October of the following year with oil and nuclear energy seemingly inexhaustible an inexhaustible Supply a circumstance that as early as 94 prompted Josh Bai to identify the waste of energy as any economy’s final goal what he says in this General economy all economy is about the waste the waste
Energy got to go away that’s when the atom the atom age came and where the all the oil came in that’s where where he has it from I say so at this moment Co extraction in Western Germany became less and less profitable the gigantic sites and infrastructures that have been
Built to enable it were in the word of becoming useless reacting to this the state government of Northern West faia approved the ru development program in 68 and called for a flexibilization of relance economy um a promised progress in the nuclear energy sector better infrastructures streets Urban Railways
The development of City centers or subcenters and so on this interesting because this program was based on the on the premise that the region should continue to be inhabited which was anything but a given when my University the ru University in 62 when was funded there had been huge discussions also in
The parliament if it’s not a mistake because it would attract people to the region but you have to to to to chase them away because the the area the era is is polluted so that’s there been long discussion and until now this has been the first institution of higher
Education there the idea was always workers do not need higher education uh because they get too organized if they if they know all this and they start read all this uh subversive literature um what more the extraction has caused dramatic sinking of large parts of the northern neuro area and here’s a map
From the from the vs that but you see in blue is all this would be Lakes this is a region populated by five million people and what you that’s with blue here would be underwater because this the soil has sunk so dramatically that now pumps running day
And night to pump all the water away and they have of course um extra pumps of the if there was a blackout complete blackout I think it would take three or four days for those legs to be flooded and those pumps are paid by money that um the coal companies they
Are responsible for they have demerged their profitable parts to pay to pay the so-called Eternal depths or Eternal burdens the so-called Eves L very poetic word it’s called like this the official word the Eternal burdens the Eternal depths of extraction but the program in 68 left no doubt if the region was
Continue to be exist to exist it should be developed some months earlier in the same year the busy year of 1968 it was a dorf based concrete poet and artist Fant kit who proposed another but nevertheless rather related agenda his Splendid manifest gluco CL off is the the miners hello that’s
What they say uh um the Manifest called for restructuring of the ru area into a work of art while the government was thinking of new infrastructures and industries Creet called on painters sculptures Architects urbanists technicians Engineers psychologists sociologist politicians unionists poets musicians filmmakers directors workers entrepreneurs and all those whose creative origination exceeds
The walls of museums libraries and concert Halls to help create a quote a project for a composition made of cities streets traffic routs Seas forests and so on this project consisted in the aesthetization of the useless sites and infrastructures that were already there KET says the Abundant mines and con
Plants furnaces CEOs machines and factories allow for the aesthetic contemplation for the very first time he dreamed of climatized cration of the near future where heaps would be transformed into color pyramides furnace firewood meet light towers and projection and helicopter Services would provide an overview of the
Spectacle once again energy was not a choice yes Sor sorry let gri it than for blorf always those projects always come from Bor yeah D where would a dle off okay all right um so perhaps PR had in mind the list and situationist experiments those of Evan Sho of
Constant I won’t I’ve worked a bit on this as timman said they also they had this this restructuring of of of Love everyday life through the oil boom now the subbs this is sel in France the new lifestyle living somewhere going in the city the city has become deserted all
This and they dreamed of this this strange city constant um creating this new Babylon cities I I won’t go on this but it’s very close but qu was not a revolutionary he was really from the ru area he wanted everybody to come in Reish capitalism and they work together
They build BS and then it’s going to be better so in 68 two strategies for restructuring economic and social infrastructures come together and both asked for development the state government Ted a program whereby new infrastructures would be built the economy would be transformed new jobs would be created
And K underscores the role art would play in the process of transformation art would help the post forist Society develop in the air conditioned theme park that once was an extractivist bone Mill a new service orientated oriented Workforce would be busy improving their personalities and brushing up their soft
Skills is an article I contrasted this now this idea of development with the idea of Maintenance because everyone every every time one one say talks about development the question who does the maintenance afterwards and it’s a very important issue for the artist wonderful artist m and ukes but I have to switch this
Because I will speak a bit about the Aesthetics again that’s her work touch sanitation where she shook the hands of every um sanitary worker in New York everybody who’s interested can look can ask me published in this book I have to skip this and go to the next chapter because what’s interesting Innovation
Into non-innovative miluse that cit’s call for a restructuration of the ru into a work of art became some kind of reality 20 years later at least partly in the international building exhibition EBR G MSHA Park um headed by Visionary urbanist K ganza under the state Minister of Housing and Urban
Development Christoph dupel held between 89 and 9 it scope included the archeological restoration of the ESS system the construction of a seage canel beneath the river we’ve seen it before and the pumping station like took 30 years to to to pump all this water away it’s opened now two years ago planned in
‘ 89 and of course this um restoration of the river was completely artificial the river would go anywhere never find its own bed it’s like they they remodeling it it’s artificial reconstruction of of what the river bed was according to sources um but even more visible was the restaging and revitalization of
Industrial ruins the first part of a landscape Park created in the former Iron Works of duburg North opened in 1949 and has been extremely popular ever since so families go there have picnic and hang around um before that it served as a setting for kristo schling Z German
Chainsaw massacre know the film from 1990 where East Germans coming to explore the West after the fall of the war are slaughtered and transformed into sausage in the Mel dut’s house which is been shot here on on scene in duburg as a direct result of the eBay
MSHA Park the era celebrated the first Ru triala Festival an art and Music Festival held in threee Cycles in 2002 artistic director Jam morier innovator in the field of Opera musical theater commissioned Creations for the giantic machine halls and blower plants the hallmar project saved the SE sulfur IR
Cy this one in industrial complex in Essen that once was the largest in the world from Demolition Z tells him got a tells in an interview he had a phone call on Christmas and he didn’t know what to do and then he decided alone with his
Family on the Christmas te decided no it has to be transformed in museum it was REM kolas who made all the plans I I skipped this a bit but um this is now there’s a choreographic center there are design places their museums there’s the ru museum with this very famous
Staircase and what you do not see at the first moment when you go there is that where the where the staircase ends that’s former ground level that’s pre-industrial ground level it’s it’s what you also do not see there are the land landmarks huge art installations on
The on the on the in the heaps on the on the dumps um they have become tourist attractions but there are some Dums burning from inside because the coal because the pressure the coal is still burning you cannot distinguish extinguish it because it would explode and carbon monoxide so you
Cannot go there otherwise you die so they have to monitor because if if the tourist die on the tourist attraction is not not the best idea either so this is the very ample villain there you put art on it and still the the Earth is is burning under underneath you cannot you
Cannot do anything about it um so what kol has said is the program of the new buildings and reprogramming of the existing buildings contain many functions most of which are related to art and culture so the buildings or the Mind dams are Hardware the old system software can be
Replaced where new one and art and culture will reanimate the well preserved ruins of an industrial past but this is important this reprograming was also aimed at Social relations subjectivities and people as infrastructure to quote Abdu Malik Simone in um one of the urban sociologists involved
In the EB MSHA Park um heosu Kila quotes to other people called hman and zeban and says well the task of all this is how to bring Innovation into non-innovative M so how can we change like this old non-innovative working-class people into Innovative subjects no longer hampered by a strict
Regime of scheduled work shifts and strongly gender labor and without both severe working conditions and the solidarity and comradeship that the mines factories and Industrial residential centers demanded and for it every one of the region inhabitants was now uh expected to look after themselves they were to be transformed into when
Mish fuku in his analysis of German Austrian post neol liberalism called the subject of Interest some books on it bansky Cho of course bana k arted at work John mckeny performer Al a little book I’ve written with some friends artworks Aesthetics of post fism so just as create anticipated the
Ization of now useless infrastructures would soon play an important role in bringing Innovation into non-innovative Muse the eliminated C plants and furnaces Were Meant to instill pride and a sense of identification with the region and promote a feeling of togetherness SES of extraction conver transformed into Civic cathedrals in
Which Ral director will DEA promised to explore in the 10 2009 Edition the tension between art and creativity and the Primal moment of religiousness but this religion would need to dwell in the hearts of otherwise entrepreneurial subjects dance performances and cultural awar were organized to help new subjects develop their emotional and
Collaborative skills and find out more about their interests in a similar way all by as early as 57 and using a completely different vocabulary J Sim had hoped that the thermodynamic error which he considered as a violation of nature would yeld to a new era of Regulation information technology that
Increases neg anthropy or negative anthropy that delays the degeneration of the universe so I got a sign that is much longer than I rehearsed really was really so long until now okay I could I could stop I I do this just say what I would have done because I’m not
Sure that this era we have reached that we’ve reached this era of Regulation and information technology or if more precise maybe we have reached it but it did not really put an end to the thermodynamic error the age of extracting and burning remnants of prehistoric organic life extraction
Moves thus moved on or continue to take place in other places maybe the thermodynamic error and the era of Regulation and information technology are much more intertwined this can be an Insight derived from Martin aba’s analysis of Chile’s neoliberal economy of extraction and his Marxist planetary mind regulation in the
Sense of regulatory Politics the state violently sets a frame for free economy for the development of free economy and extractivism might work very well together okay what I finally wanted to do I will do this is um examine maybe can do this later on I don’t know uh or
Can ask me about it I can send you the text uh what okay when KET says there going to be some kind of theme perk what are the other sentiments aesthetic sentiments here’s a work by by um by douas Gordon um silence exit the seat at the rala what is this
Uncanniness this um this shudder this dizziness this violent feeling that you get when you walk into the sides where does it come from and I would say and then I would read valter Benjamin AR project it has to do with a very strange constellation of time that there’s a
Time of progress in aranit time of an Ever progressing Humanity white Europeans as seen in in the idea of thermodynamics irreversibly but this is related to the extraction and burning of heaps un unimaginable heaps of anorganic matter that has been there to much much earlier before any human being appeared
On Earth and this this this this relation between some kind of of cosmic time and sometime of idea of of of of irreversible progress I think becomes manifest in the in the in the uh let’s say the Aesthetics the ornamental Aesthetics of those buildings but as I
Got it I have enough time for this and if you want I can send you the text this one um yeah that’s how it looks like that’s a I don’t know what it’s called in English um C openen coke coke oven okay so let let’s stop here that’s lithium that’s from another
Earlier version yeah thank you I’m terribly sorry that time is against us may I pass the word on to Flavia yeah how can we change it here now the I thought this was thein program the technical part it’s okay oh yeah we had another one I was
Before it’s okay okay so it’s not only time against it’s also different versions of the program that’s why they order is different in everybody’s program okay thank you very much everyone thank you especially thas and Y for the invitation and yeah I’ll go straight to the text not to lose myself in time Um okay to fully grasp the deeper senses of both indigenous relation to Earth land and their art artistic practices it may be productive to begin by just opposing this perspective to a global scenario of predatory extractivism setting the scene is important so we can move forward or slide from binary simplistic oppositions
And shed light on the way setting a scenario can also make us aware of our practical conditions highlighting queries that shift according to our position moreover setting a scenario emphasizes some points of view that are also standpoints this talk is divided into four parts where the scenario are scenes
One and two followed by two art projects one by Wana artist Gustavo kaboko and the second by the banua community from amazona state in the third part I will briefly meditate on time Dimensions either from Western Colonial capitalist divided and accelerated time and nonwestern configurations of time and
Lastly I conclude by standing for an active listening as a strategy to navigate this complex and unequal scenario so scene one to begin with I call predatory extractivism activities that are related to maintaining the plantation system in its NE neoliberal phase which can be described as an intensification and acceleration of
Extractivism responding to financial demands monoculture dispossession of both lands and communities processes of commodification and racial capitalism as depicted by oors such as Denise F daa and ashil mamb it difference them from small scale extractivism and it refers to a Glo globally connected world where former Colonial territories have renewed
Their places as site of explorations of so-called natural resources and land and people dispossession I’m talking about then financed markets eating the Earth as the vi opawa puts it referring to white people’s Western rationality as a hemony on Earth in this scenario what once were seen as productive forces from
A traditional Marxist perspective are now openly destructed forces worldwide as the becoming black of the world an increasing population whose humanity is questioned surveilled and objectified such as migrants refugees nonwhite people Etc MBE analyzes Blackness as a contemporary Paradigm in a Le liberal globalized Financial capital and in a
Context of rising digital Technologies and new forms of extraction such as data mining MIM also talks about a decentralized Europe where a geopolitical transformation is tuned to Asian markets and new players such as big tech companies something mraa and Ne Uso call Neo extractivism these authors also signed to material extractions producing
Narratives of dispossession enforced displacements of lands and I quote them Tales of dispossession and displacements are the flip side of the expansion of extractive activities indigenous groups are often the protagonist of these Tales sometimes negotiating benefits around the edge of extractive Enterprise but always seemly ending up on the Vanquish
Side end of quotation the indigenous struggles are the oldest in Brazil or pindorama and they have taken on a new tone with the arrival of Agri business we can also mention the alian Floresta in 1980s and articulation between Rubber tappers and Indigenous people in the Amazon region of akri also worth
Mentioning is the landless movement which has been fighting for more than 30 years other examples are resistance to the work and effects of mining in the areas around the Hui in Miner in a dispute with Valley company and struggles against slavery like work in monocultural plantations in various part of
Brazil along with Meda n again they say while it is important to honor and remember these struggles we are convinced that is necessary to explore their potential in order to link them to struggles directly directed against other areas of capitalist activities in a sense this would mean recognizing that
Indigenous ways of living and practices have to do with other capitalist activities and similarly what struggles for land have to do with other activities in simil distanced and unrelated Landscapes thinking about extractivism in an expanded sense these authors also highlight how how it encompasses not only physical activity
But also the logistics associated with its financing transporting storage and consumption in a sense that encompasses the fields of logistics and finance Logistics is the means of synchronizing and coordinating the movement of people and goods in SpaceTime looking at Logistics makes material connections between seemingly desparate logics such
As mineral extraction and the realm of Finance these authors also explore how capital is so dependent on its outsides that it’s prepared to make considerable Investments for instance in prospecting and research to ensure the constant reproduction of these outsides it should be emphasizes that these forecasts work with complex statistics and
Probabilities so the imagin Futures is framed by by capitalist interests to understand the intensification and expansion of extractivist Industries in contemporary capitalism particularly Agri business and Mining we need an approach that is attentive to new sources of extractions that are emerging in activities such as data mining and
Bioc capitalism according again to these authors and I quote it is not only when operations of capital plunder the materi materiality of the earth and biosphere but also when they encounter and draw upon forms and practice of human cooperation and sociality that we can say that extraction is at
Stake in the sense of human so sociability we can think of digital interaction as a potential sight of extractivism in this extended sense an example of this is data mining although it seem it seem irrelevant to users when they click on terms of uses of websites and searches digital behavior is tracked
And recorded producing Big Data it is the logic of profiling based on algorithm calculations by tracking human activity uh in digital environments preparing the ground for subjective extraction create creating the potential to anticipate Behavior generate insights and then create value data mining continues to open New Frontiers for the
Expansion of property Logics blurring the boundaries between governance processes and capital valorization Dynamics n and madraza this point to the digital terrain as the New Frontier being explored in neoliberal capitalism based on voluntarily survial sociability with extra activism and according to David ftin we can also speak of digital
Colonialism I I I won’t draw upon it but let’s just keep this in mind as New Frontier of predatory extractivism through technology and the persistent effect of colonization also current in this first scene is the death is is death as a d driving Dr destructive force of capitalism where the politics and
Economy of death are the Norms racism and xenophobia are then one of the major regulations categories of distribution of death in articulation with the judical political structure of the plantation quoting Davidson falino a sociologist from unifesp we see the antagonism between Hightech and High Precision War and the
Uses of nomadic tactics with raids against the enemy which usually are populations not organized as militias that live die in Worlds of death of the F 21st century circuits of mineral and essential materials to extraction to feed military and technological revolution in some I’m talking about the int angled history and practice of
Coloniality and in some territories still D direct colonialism predatory extractivism and whiteness scene two I evoke now a second scene just opposed and directly in dispute with the first one that contrasts the colonial concept of Nature and understands the Coe implications of both body and territory in its profound
Relationship to maintaining the cycle of all lives the concept of body territory which comes from indigenous and afrodiasporic movements will problematize what has been divided as culture SL nature and more importantly can teach us how to navigate the death worlds of the first scene as a desertion
Of of the nature culture divide the body territory is expressed in non sub alternative validation between beings and their interactions it Embraces multiple cosmologies outside of the monotheist par Paradigm which is in the end in tune with capitalism in all its mono Expressions monotheism monoculture monol language of nation states
Unidirectional Arrow of Western time monochromatic and stable identity imposition conjoint the concept of body territory also problematized the commodification processes through recognizing full agency and knowledge production from nonhumans in our web of interactions and considering spiritual interactions in this equation it also means the articulation of anti-racist
And de Colonial struggles with the pro protection of the environment which is so evident which is not so evident both in racial and ecological discourses that frequently prioritize one of the terms at the expense of the other uh indigenous cator Sandra benites clarified that territory does not refer
To the capitalist sense of property nor is limited to geography she speaks of territory as the surroundings that is the land the air Rivers animals plants and the invisible beings that make guani guata p possible Earth is not only the land as soil but but all the surroundings the
Plants riverse the mineral worlds and the spirits that sustain biodiversity in some the entangled living aspects of beings of all beings moreover their interaction exceeds the Western understanding of contact and interaction the work of bandana Shiva emphasizes how Western reasoning relates to the world most from three kinds of contacts by
Imposition by friction contact and by force contact from this body territory perspective the primary need for territory also has to do with the possibility of positioning oneself in the world in dialogue with biod diversity to have a territory is therefore to have the possibility of positioning oneself of belonging to a
Surround surroundings or environment it has then multiple senses occupying space having an environment and positioning oneself in the world as each indigenous people tells its own story the world is complex full of different lives that coexist giving a deeper meaning to biodiversity the common line in any case
Is the intimate reciprocal and mutual relation between bodies and Terr iies in short between different beings of this nature that we are made of it is important to acknowledge that the the non-anthropomorphic aspect of the body and that of Mother Earth to as an example of that the kuna people relate
The newborn’s baby to a tree and the krak people tied a newborn baby to a plant and I quote in Portuguese Kaki Transit territory then needs caring healing defense and strengthening but in ways that we must tune with as in the Pali project titled the Earth asks for
Silence or of Gustavo koku’s work over we see listen to the Earth listening grounds us or coming to the Earth or turning into Earth this is one of the possible meanings of being an offspring of the Earth the ones that have a carrying relationship to the Earth as a living
Being Earth is in D dialog with us or to quote neobus tile of his book The strictly in anthropomorphic ways so nonhuman agencies are active outside of the anthropomorphic frames and from Narrative of the anthropos scene as white quoting Aon kak talking about Kil writer de bis’s idea of confluences confluences our contra
His crique Neu bishu coined the term Confluence which also distinguish itself from convergence and Divergence common political terms associated in a binary form scene one and two should not be positioned in binary terms but just just opposed from indigenous and kilala perspective does struggle is that of finding confluences to find livable
Context and healing death worlds extending the territory struggle to the Arts context indigenous art practice highlight these drives to a strengthen bonds to the Earth through several forms these practices are not free from predatory extractive extractivism within the art world and from academic context but I will focus
Focus on their resistance and continuous bringing up of confluences articulating the body territory in their means Gustavo koku is a WAP artist from kurich Chiba and haa and his work connects this territories through his own familial stories from historical narratives of expropriation of indigenous WAP people and through materialities such as cotton
Threads drawings paintings animation videos narratives and writing books his Works claim the right of collective Wana memorialization and reframing of indigenous narrative in art history and in art museums his 2022 exhibition called o ATA curated by by himself at Milan Gallery S Paulo addresses through paintings videos and installations time
And space dimensions of dislocation and migration of indigenous people tying them to the need of listening to the Earth on the gallery wall we Read the second art practice that articulates listening to the Earth from the perspective of body territory is the Pali project created in 2021 by the banua commun community led by kasiki Luis laan banua of itara mein in the state of amazonas and invited non indigenous artists such as myself
Dealing with the direct conflicts of the invasion of their lands the construction of the airports near the territory and the loud sound of the thermoelectric plant Zaraki the Earth asks for silence was a graffiti inscription on the wall near the Thermo Electric Plant a series of digital letters addressed to the
Federal political government of Brazil under bolsonaro Administration also cataloged on the Instagram page and graffiti workshops with the banua community with drawings on a tree bark called Tori for an exhibition called missas aak IM my ban is not good and the knowledge house in the knowledge house Pali means
Exchange and is also a name of an important B ritual this project was denouncing invasions of the banaa territory through different media together with the drawings and other actions there was sound and video contribution from non-indigenous artists and my contribution was a written dialogue called escut then you can see on Instagram I’ll
Skip that part the silence that Earth asks for is either related to the pandemic year or of 2021 denouncing and the increasing attempts to invade Bano Community not only on their lands but also with the extremely high sound of the airport which interfered the communication through sound so important
Sense in the forest and for bous practice of sharing dreams the thermoelectric plant plant blocked the access to the river and substitute Ed for showers installed in the community Pali was then a sight to communicate with non indigenous people about the current and past violation and also a way to demarcate vanest presence
And perspective in the art world I would like now to say a few words about time before concluding how does predatory extractivism act on time by imposing a commodity circulation time and a time that responds to finance this is imposition of Western capitalist time Kronos and its greedy impact on Valor
Valorizing the capitalist value despises and subordinate subordinates longer time Cycles such as River time that trespasses different territories by the way that’s how Amazon company not the river profits with the capacity of logistics to enter the commodity time of valorizations as expressed in Commodities just in time broading this narrow concept of time
Interactions between humans and nonhumans are driven otherwise by indigenous people dealing with the circularity of time and the strengthening of the cycle of all lives are as important parameters of sharing and living in this world talking about death in his text cartographies after the end kak States or it per
For I conclude by saying that indigenous artistic practices can make us aware of possible anti-predatory extra extractivist perspective while demanding active listening as a strategy to navigate this complex unequal and just opposed Global scenario in which we have all moving positions of extracting or being extracted by understanding body
Territory as a paradigm to which to relate and the interconnectedness of human nonhuman Interac actions perhaps we can open ourselves to deeply understand nonwhite perspectives and proposed proposal of a share future for us all as koku says and I quote the Earth in each second tries to communicate with our presence not as
An idea of separating as humans do separating nature and humans but in the sense of us being one thing maybe by emphasizing our connections we can understand and fight for environmental rights as our own right to fully exist and with that also address the damaging r racialization that subordinates us to
The people of the merchandise so together with this indigenous and kumola knowledge areas such as environmental Humanities ecocriticism ecofeminism and the colonial ecology can perhaps illuminate and collaborate to bridge ways to cope with the he he hegemony of death worlds also dismantling this Gloomy future by taking
Seriously the act of heal and Care thank [Applause] Youav thank you so much for this presentation just on time and I hand over the word to Our Guest Fernanda P who will present to us on her current work and I’m trying to find the title while she’s setting up um extractivist practices within and outside of the museum so
Can you hear me yeah uh thank you so much uh thank you Thomas thank you yon uh and thank you you all uh for being here and uh enduring uh until this time I hope I my talk will keep you awake and uh we can discuss further on
Uh different topics that uh combine in our three uh presentations I was uh invited to uh present a work by uh Brazilian artist Lucas bomboi which was as uh Thomas already said uh presented at the Marky the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of s Paulo um in
This first semester here in 2023 which I had the pleasure to uh accompany and curate and I uh also proposed to um show you and speak about two other uh projects that I um involved one is a work uh by the artist uh Dena which was presented in an exhibition I
Curated during the pandemic uh at the pakota uh a work uh video Work called Copo and I will show you and the third one is a project Pro that is currently uh being presented at kazad poovu as a partnership between kazad poovu and Maki and that has uh something that we are
Calling an experiment an experiment on flight uh that is a series of um visits uh by the Tupa Cape uh made by uh the the community of the s and uh through the hands of glyer Puma so I’ll start reading H so I keep track
Of time and uh first I will will talk a little bit about uh this project by uh Lucas momosi then I’ll show you uh the newson’s video and uh in my last part of the talk uh we will present you the um um cape in movement uh
Project well uh Sol stalgia is a proposal by Lucas bomboi uh a researcher filmmaker and visual artist who has been exploring a characteristic of contemporary times in his recent words Works solastalgia a term coined by philosopher Glenn Albert in 2005 the feeling of loss in the face of radical landscape
Transformations whether natural or Urban these Transformations resulting from extractivism the Intensive and extensive exploitation of the environment have consequences that are experienced As Natural um as natural C catastrophes but are actually anthropogenic created by humans as a visual artist Lucas bomazi imagines this feeling investigating it causes based on his experience with the
Landscape of Miner eyes the state where he he grew up projections luminous P panels Digital Image Banks and other devices give shape to this investigation which also reflects on how to visually present the triggers of solastalgia questioning our experience of being affected by these images hence the artist exploits uh various images
Technologies the language of film and the central piece of the installation which is this one uh solastalgia highlights eroded Landscapes and mountains the monumentality of the images creates a bodily impact and lead us oscillating between Fascination and Terror to enter the scenario of tragedies caused by mining in the region
Of Minar which annihilate ways of life in the name of an archaic notion of progress uh pisan has got this um um I forgot to torned yes Landscapes presents images produced by AAL and satellite imagery is the three monitors you see on the floor uh but satellite imagery that
Allow us allow access to the airspace of mining areas which is off limits to most inhabitants of this Landscapes this work contrasts with the immersive perspective of the film The objectified Language of this records showing mining Critters inacessible to Common cameras challenges the capacity for dissociation caused by
This apparatuses and make us reflect on the active role of the scientific gaze in extractive Annihilation mon continue uh by MOA Duo that Lucas and Fernando Velasquez uh formed in 2013 I guess uh inscribes successive grooves on a MAA plate creating a symbolic scale s soundscape of Perpetual
Erosive uh processes you see here just the uh images that the um the MAA um played on a on a um on a disco uh record um uh that that image forms this kind of graphic appearance on the wall another video extra extra extra extra created from images published by press Outlets screen
Photojournalistic records of recent tragedies natural disasters or actions of exploitation uh from around the world the word iner the work inserts the situation on a global scale and questions the repetitive perception produced by the circulation of these images impr prompt the ones that you see
Here on the on the right uh side of the picture uh the image is reduced to a semantic description directing what you see or imagine in the scenes as a as an inverse script the installation is completed by the work uh of three invited thinkers who presents in loses
Text phrases that synthetize each of their ideas about solost stalgia new Arts uh uh new artist contributions in dialogue with the exhibition uh were added uh to the installation uh through the Instagram page uh of the project Solaria is part derived uh from the feature film lava which Lucas directed in
2021 and uh who um who has the contribution which has the contribution of screenplay um Christian nasis and production by Andre halak and Eder Santos uh in his uh statement for this exhibition Bazi uh Bambi affirms that the maintainance of continuous extractivism is an anachronistic remnant of various forms of colonization that
Have taken hold of the world in the current scenario there is no clean solution for sustainable and minimally clean energy a model of catastroph has been established Crossing immaterial spheres and reaching the raw physicality of the planet’s Landscapes the situation is particularly blaten in the area surrounding bizon where mining is
Everywhere mapping and digital cartographies made visible what is hidden from the naked eye by barriers of eucalyptus trees the documentation oftenly taking place um challenging the airspace control by mining companies he filmed uh together with other people this uh mining areas uh which the airspace is controlled by the
Miners if in the past um um the what inside the Earth was zered now uh companies take control of the air and their damage become widely known through image the catastrophes of Marana in 2015 and brumagin in 2019 being extensive documented so uh the of course the images don’t uh
Make Justice to the to the installation um but uh the this is uh part of uh What uh Lucas showned uh at the Museum and together with the exhibition there was a series of activities talks and um uh workshops that were held uh in the in the museum expanding uh the discussion
Around this uh specific um effort to highlight this kind of Statics of extractivism by this feeling of uh solastalgia and um I think uh many issues raised on how to address uh that feeling and that Aesthetics through um mining uh uh different Technologies and um Aesthetics that come from
Extractivist uh practices like mapping the territory um uh data processing uh information through uh images and so on uh the second um project this is another better photo of the MAA um rotation and uh the image that it forms yeah uh the second uh um project
That I would like to address uh touches um extractivism from uh indigenous pers perspective it’s a video by artist uh Den banua from the banua people and it was uh presented in that exhibition that I mentioned uh no uh no one would have believed um an exhibition that I created
Together with Len Zan uh um researcher from Belgium uh we did uh that exhibition first in Belgium during the pandemic uh and then at pakota just after that when when the museum began to open up and we could uh install the exhibition uh we um we uh
Departed from a book by Ain Korea um illustrated by Ain COA the book uh which you may know um that was written by um agaja Wells uh and is a narrative of uh Martian invasion in Earth and um that book at the time uh presented us
A challenge that uh would uh have to do with giving or trying to find an image that could represent what we were uh wanting on uh with the covid pandemic and we found many different points of um contact between our current present and uh the book uh in its
Um uh crazy fiction and uh the new made uh this video that uh speaks about um um mining uh gold mining in the Yanomami um territories and uh I think it uh also connects uh that event or that uh current situation with uh an explanation from indigenous uh epistemologist of the
Pandemic itself I’ll show you the video it’s three minutes I guess we have time um oh sorry I had to you do something with the oh thank you guys microphone key e um well we could uh discuss uh many uh uh aspects of this um of this work um
Departing from the use of RN and sarcasm to address uh the tragic uh situation of the uh yanomi Yanomami territories but I um would like to point out um the aspects of uh um presenting uh an Aesthetics of extractivism from an indigenous point of view what is uh the
Sensuous uh relation to the territory and to the transformations of the territory uh made by extractivism and um the unleash of uh uncontrolled forces that are uh that explanation of um the covid pandemic uh for uh the yamami people um um I leave you with the English uh
Translation that we make of that um uh poem that Denon um uh says um as a narrative of the the film and um I think that uh text also addresses uh second aspect of extractivism that I would like to uh address here now uh with you which cultural uh extractivism not only
Natural extractivism but also cultural extract extractivism as he speaks of um um the relationships of the art world with extractivism not only addressing um jewelry company that uh is involved in the illegal mining in the Amazon uh area but also how uh Davi opa’s book at the time was being praised by by
Um the um cultural industry and um it shows danielson’s um Um distance or uh criticism of um how uh cultural institutions and the cultural world uh is relating to uh indigenous cultures and uh indigenous art so um my third um example here to you um is uh this project by uh indigenous artist um glyceria tumba a project that
Um is uh a two part project one that consists in an exhibition uh at kovo an exhibition that will be uh on show until uh December the 9th and uh this what we are calling experiment of the mon movent or the cape in movement which consists
Of um series of visits of uh this um entity uh the mental the cape uh made by uh glyceria and the people uh of the sead so I keep reading reading uh so I keep in time uh the mon Moval project consists of a research exhibition and a series of visits by the
Mon to spaces communities and institutions in the city of s Paulo organized by the curatorial committee made up ofera austan Benjamin suusi myself Juliana Cafe and julana G the project also included the participation of an duu Kyle ler laa dava and Liv Livia V Viano sorry alga Tois and
Jesi among all agents partners and representatives of the spaces communities and institutions that Demento the cape visits between September 3rd and December 9th 2023 the group was carried uh Away by what glyceria calls the spell of the thread the power of The Capes to call together people institutions and objects
Around it to follow its path of recovery mon ment expands the network already formed by gleria austan Juliana gonu and julana Cafe they came together in 20120 to create the exhibition aaba AA presented in Brazilia port ciguru and the SE Village in Baya the spell of the thread weaves more
Effective alliances I quote uh krak on this and the group meets again at the invitation of Kazu an art space founded by the Jewish community in the bohu neighborhood in 1946 and Maki the Contemporary Art Museum of the University of s Paulo with the aim of bringing the clothes to the city
Expanding the network of alliances instead of keeping it locked up uh in a single physical space space reproducing a colonial gesture of appropriation the collective proposal was to make it travel to find people institutions and objects to continue continue weaving encounters by allying itself uh with the Tupin by struggle and
Resistance the project the project invite us to reflect on exhibition and Museum methods and on the relationship between art memory and Heritage from an indigenous perspective the visiting experiment which uh the Creator committee color the Flight of the cloth or the Flight of the main the cape consisted consists of
Weaving relationships based on an invitation issued by the committee a formal letter was sent to initial list of leaders spaces and institutions chosen after discussions with the commun within the community Comm sorry the criter Ian was affinity and uh emotional alliances glera set the only condition that the places where the where the
Mental would be welcome and those where the mental could feel good a guest who visits visit visits their hosts and it’s grateful for what they can offer them a place to stay food a bed a conversation based on this invitation negotiations were established so that the mental could be received in
Different places with a view to the care that the mental requires to be received with dignity the visit could last a day or week depending on the possibilities of the host the length of stay was always agreed taking into account the a availability of the space the Affinity
With its programming the desire and opportunity to visit the mental to establish alliances to join struggles to exchange experiences the project provided transportation and insurance for the mental negotiating professional conditions for talks lectures and activities offered by uh gleria and the committee it was also important to engage in dialogue so that institutions
With more conditions or resources could collaborate with the viability of visits to self-managed spaces and organizations everyone contributed according to their abilities this aspect was heavily negotiated throughout the project and allowed uh glyceria to observe many Dynamics in the Arts and in museums in particular uh lots of generosity coming
From different uh disadvantage backgrounds uh were uh part of what uh we observed with uh this experiment and um the me uh the mental the C AP went to meet those heard those who heard uh its call during the months of September to December the meno Vis visited Villages
Museums occupations leaving from uh and returning to kazad poovo some of these visits were accompanied by um by the members of the citoral committee creating spaces for exchange conversation public talks and debates uh the MTO mental projects is offshoot of what glyceria has been doing since
The N 2000 her work steams from a simple and Powerful gesture while the return of the cloths from Europe were being negotiated was being regot negotiated she asked herself the question why couldn’t the tupinamba people who are still alive in pindorama make a new cloth and that’s what she did with her
Village in with the elders with the children with bibliographical research with expeditions to European collections with allies and with the support of dreams and the permission of the enchanted ones and here uh you can so can see a little bit of her uh research in two big panels
Maps that uh you have uh at Kaz po showing uh the threads and the paths that she performed performed in still performs uh to find uh the known 11 uh capes that are still in um Europe glera didn’t uh started with didn’t start with the shape of the or or
The object but with the gesture she started to remember from in from the inside out from the birth to the feather from the knot to the mesh what it means to make the cloth following what she calls the spell of the thread she created with the permission of the enchanted ones three
Clothes one that dresses kasik babal another that is in the national museum in Hill Janeiro and the third one that has landed at kazad poovo and is visiting different uh institutions in s Paulo uh the project had had put into practice a curatorial um experiment that aim decolonizing thoughts in the mon
Movement uh project uh our methodology has been to provoke above all encounters between the mental and its host sites in these spaces a zone of contact arises as well as tensions a challenge is launched for each space that is open to welcoming the mentle for non non indigenous
Institutions the question arises what is your contribution to the inclusion of indigenous researchers and their processes in museums institutions and cultural spaces what are their efforts to contribute to dialogues and the construction of Dynamics and practices of memory and Heritage that strengthen indigenous peoples part of the Project’s challenge
Is to deal with the a ways in which museums conceive their collections their relationships with artists and creators and their workers too their collecting practices we need to think about the relationships between institutions and those between institutions and people inside and outside them we also did a lot of thinking within this project
Um because museums and the people who working the in them are very much marked by practices that reinforce the objectification of of nonwestern cultures the museum is based on possession competition the contest for uh originality and Novelty the project stressed these characteristics and proposed working on the fabric of the cloth it invited
Reflection okay um so where I go uh so one of the main uh goals was to uh inscribe in the space of the museum different ways of belonging uh not only uh challenging the Museum’s urge to acquire collect keep uh objects but uh to uh present um this experiment of
Passing through as Gustavo kabuko would say uh institutions and collections are archives uh reving uh their methods and uh categories of uh relating to um indigenous cultures so I I had two lines but I’ll close here okay thank you sorry for interrupting you I just um
Didn’t know where you would stop so I thought I remind you okay well thank you so much for these presentations um as we already um have progressed in time I had prepared a little bit of a longer comment but I will only really raise a few points um trying to make some
Connections and also maybe just give the audience some time to um formulate your own questions I think I really wanted to thank the three presentations because I think you took off where the description of the workshop left ended and basically because you you took us a lot further
Than I think what um was in the description I think that’s the best what can happen that is um just reminding us if we think of how extractivism was characterized for this workshop and how it is generally debated is the material process of capitalist accumulation right
And it appears already in two nuances in your presentations one on the one hand as ways of understanding hon honic ideology um that is behind as it is an ism um behind um extraction as a practice but also very much so as a criticism which became very clear now in
Fernand final statement on cultural extractivism because I think the extractivism is being stretched but it’s stretched in order to make a statement a political statement secondly and that’s what I want to focus on in my um comments is on the Aesthetics the aesthetical dimension of extractivism and here it was said
That it’s both about the artistic representations in different media but also the sensations and sensorial um experiences or sens um cognition on the one hand um also thinking of the work that was K kicking us off by y um art can at times mainly be perceived as a reframing of
Extractivism and the ruins of extractivism itself so basically a a technique as a particular way of also framing extractivism itself here maybe there is um this is um a very limited or um possibility of art or one that is maybe mostly remains in the realm of
Critical reflection but it can be M go much further as um y has shown himself and also the other presentations have shown and it can go all the way to the aesthetic dimension of extractivism can go all the way to we think of how we conceptualize how we
Um um address or how we relate to the world as a Senti pensar for example like the the feeling and thinking together inextricably linked and that brings us basically as a very basic question to um what are the limits of extractivism it goes back to a debate we had on Thursday
To what extent is it useful as a as an as an analytical notion to what extent is it also um need um to what extent do we also need to um put limits to it overall the question I had regarding the presentations and the overall theme the Aesthetics of structuralism is
And the question of where the action actually lies regarding the process of extraction are people in territories that you address and engage within your work mely reactive or also active I think it become very clear that they’re very active but sometimes we think as if the they were put into place only to
React and to understand possibly to critique possibly mainly in the in in this mode of resistance and I I I really quite want to um keep that as a main thought here and to think about the registers of both reaction and action and how they unfold
And to what extent we speak about a reaction to the fact of extraction of of capitalist logic and to what extent you actually go a lot further to also think about actions that are unfolding and regenerating territories as um Y at some point has said and I think what um Thomas said in
His introduction that we might be invited to think of relations and the relations that constitute um these tensions is already a way to to move Beyond or explore the limits I try to raise maybe three or four uh main points so one is is um Aesthetics of extractivism just a
Spillover effect of the hegemony of economic relations or capitalism as it become very clear um clearly we see that we see that even in the work of a ooya Who descri describes renewable energies in her own work who wasn’t present but she really describes that despite that being all
Greenwashed um it’s she basically says that it’s mainly a greenwashed form of extractivism so that makes it very clear so that this logic is still around um how would all of that change or how how could we explore the limits more if you thought about um the logic of
Relations the Logics of relationalities of healings if we thought about a vocabulary that thinks about fissures but also so the mo the the processes of curing um where the the the the damage remains seen but something new emerges so that is one it is closely related to
Um the question of the how the aesthetical dimension um deals with asymmetries that are very much at the basis of the extractionist logic this is global um asymmetries but also ontological asymmetries how does um how how do the two relate how does Aesthetics relate to asymmetries how do asymmetries appear in the aesthetical
Dimension to put it very crudely how or to what extent are hierarchies present in a plurality of aesthetic practices I think that becomes very crucial because it’s not that we when we speak when we turn to the Arts that everything is all of a sudden amazing and beautiful and solved
And healed it’s not clearly that becomes clear in your own work and how does but how does also a stady legal practice is a potent register to address critique change the hierarchies that are in place a third dimension that I want to briefly address is the debate we had
About the extraction Aesthetics of extractivism and depletion or exhaustion and here I thought it becomes very clear in some of the narratives that you presented but I think it may be worthwhile to think um about the limits or the the this particular Dimension this particular characteristic of AR
Structur ISM the depleting aspect of the the ex hosting aspect if you think of cultural extractivism ontological extractivism Etc because I wanted to um we can see that um when we change our conceptional keys then we all of a sudden um step out of that logic of and
And of a limited resource and you get into a logic of the re remaking the regenerating the this the cyclical aspects of it so that’s that’s one um a fourth dimension that I thought was that I’m particularly maybe here I’m just selfish um that I wanted to raise
Is the question of Aesthetics and ter ter territory or territoriality while it is sort of an obvious statement right that extractivism has to do with the materiality of land of territory we already learned from um flavia’s Pres entation that territory and territoriality is much more than the geographical reference or the material
One but still I was wondering um is territory or territoriality a potent analytical dimension of your work or is it mainly a descriptive one is it a corrective is it a focus is um because it is so much more present in indigenous IDE um ontologies and epistemologies or
Um what what does it do in your work for you because I think it’s quite crucial because it’s it’s it is a it’s an omnipresence in all of your work but it’s not always made specific what what what what it is that it um brings to the
Debate and I I’m just I think it would be really helpful especially if we think about it in terms of the the ontological dimension in terms of the new materialist dimension of it Etc and the artistic also um Dimension as an material practice last aspect just to make it keep it short is
Um Aesthetics of extractivism and I struggle with it and I think it hasn’t become it has become very clear but I think I just wanted to leave it as a last comment is sometimes it seems as if if when we talk Arts that and if we shift to the poetic Dimension
The aesthetic poetic Dimension that this is an inter mention in and the critique of the political Politics as in the capital P basically the honic capitalist extractivist modernist aset political project nevertheless I think it’s very it’s become very clear in your presentations that what you’ve described as aesthetic practices are very much
Political and I think that can be foregrounded because I think that’s the moment when when um it becomes even more explicit how the practices um and the aesthetical dimension of extractivism that you have pointed to um become a an intervention in a very contested and and
In a very um violent field and I just wanted to make that clear because I always think um it can’t be said often enough that the poetic and the political they sort of intertwined and come together and sometimes this is necessary also in order for this not to be forgotten from
A hegemonic point of view because it can be easily sidetracked into sort of a placebo or a curing um tactic rather than actually a full scale political project thank [Applause] you and now I’m chair and invite questions in really any language that you want to raise and I can help with translations if
Necessary who has questions and we have we have a good half hour like 35 to 40 minutes for a debate which was the organizers wish to keep so much time in order to really engage in a in dialogues and critical engagements I’ll go very quickly then to
To break the thank you the shyness of the room uh thank you very much I was really delighted with the panel uh and I think Tillman did an excellent job of of uh summoning and putting together some of the points uh Flavia no sorry Yan uh I would like to listen to
You a bit more about this strange feeling that people feel going to this uh old dams and you started talking about that and then you didn’t have time would they like to hear more about that and also about this very strange idea makaren also works a bit on that on this
Different temporalities like the temporality of the of the of the coal and of the oil as something prehistorical and how we burned this so fast so I don’t know if it’s just metaphoric or if there’s something more there this Clash of temporalities between the the almost prehistorical uh temporality of this
Material and how we burn it so fast I think there’s something there but I don’t know what uh Flavia thank you very much I I really loved uh the thing about the silence and I remember like there is a project uh where they they’re talking about uh
Submarine noise caused by Mining and how thises is affecting wildlife in the oceans and then you think like even deep in the ocean there is this Machinery working and disturbing everything and and and and then if we’re talking about Statics obstructive ISM then of course we’re talking about senses and the five
Senses and your presentation really took me to this uh to the side of listening and hearing and what structive ISM produces and how it was before you also mentioned how in the forest sound is very important for communication maybe even more than than visuality so it’s also about survival and communication so
If you could develop this a bit I’ll be very glad um and then my last question is both uh is both for Fernanda but I’ll be glad if you could also comment Tilman because tilman’s question is very interesting so we’re talking about structive ISM we’re talking about territory but then we go
Into this a bit more metaphorical which I’m not sure if it’s metaphorical or nor like cultural rucis and so on and then what what territory becomes also in this metaphor because your last part is is is it’s uh it’s a moving territory somehow I don’t know if you could say that
Because the scape is traveling you can also comment if you want Flavia and then tomorrow I’ll speak a bit about this but uh uh there is um D is describing the the Amazon River and the Amazon River transports a lot of ground dirt like Earth material a
Lot um and then he’s criticizing the river the text is very very strange very interesting and then on this I see an image of instructive ism like this this rever that is taken away that is destroying the land and is taken away of course this is just is being crazy but
The image is very strong and then he uses this wonderful this wonderful metaphor that the river is a traveling territory of course but then structive ism is also traveling territory in the sense it’s like exporting nature exporting soil and that’s also something you lose you also losing it culturally
Together with the soil if you could comment on that thank you and then we pass to gilam and afterwards to but we take Gil’s question then we have a round of questions and then we have Gloria inas okay thank you very much all of you very rich I have a a a
Quick con conceptual question maybe more uh related to Flavia and Y presentation maybe but I want to to to hear uh something about we are talking about extractivism and Ne extractivism I want to know more about what do you think is the difference what what is new about
Necis nativism and if there is a relation or if is the same thing uh when we are discussing like historical developmentalism and Ne developmentalism we say disolving now invol what’s the relation between uh this this Concepts yeah thank you let’s have a first let’s have a first
Round of answers maybe we go um from the back to the front so um Fernand do you want do you want to start yeah yeah okay um so I’ll start um I’ll start by cultural extractivism um I think it’s uh I didn’t I didn’t uh
Plan it as a metaphor because uh what I um um what I am interested in discussing and bringing into the discussion is that um cultural practices Museum practices are part of what extractivism is so what do you call it coloniality or extractivism and um maybe I would uh
Then uh touch your question is there a new uh a Neo extractivism or it’s a continuity of a project that comes with modernity and coloniality as the um the other side of the coin uh so um what I uh Um what I uh was trying to uh talk through this idea of cultural extractivism is uh if uh and how can we imagine uh Museum and cultural practices and academic practices that uh reinvent or depart from uh those structures so this experiment of the of the this
Moving territory uh of the cape and I totally agree with you it’s a it’s an idea of whether you have indigenous presence you create that territory so um the idea of moving the cape from uh institution to institution from place to place is to experiment the possibility of creating uh
That territory and uh making it visible and uh of course the practice of making The Capes have to do uh or has to do with the territory with the relationship with the territory with what the territory can give now and how it can be uh changed recovered or healed through uh that
Practice uh gler she show says I I’m calling this art because it’s that the way you understand uh but what I’m doing is something different uh that I am translating to you into this word that you agree know and and praise uh so I guess this has it has to do with that
And uh it has to do about creating presence uh within uh museums and within the cultural uh world and the academic world a present that it we can look at each other here and see how needed is that presence so something it’s about it I don’t know if if I answer the [Laughter]
Question for for Fore for indigen people Predatory extractivism small scale For for Min out for for Al inter Yeah yeah thank you thank you CH thank everybody also thank two of you as being one of organizers here for your talks um difficult questions I me um the question about the role of Art and Aesthetics of course difficult because um we all know that art as free art is
Is some kind of of of of European concept of modern European concept and deep relation with capitalism free art you take something out of context that’s what already heel says it might have a ritual function you take it off context and then it’s art and you put in the
Museum and then you you may you may yeah you may look at it you walk around it and make get other other Notions and you interpret it and there are of course other Concepts artist agency gel and all the other anthropological concepts of of what art is the the the act of isolating
Something from from a context be it ritual religious whatever makes into art and I I have noidea idea if this is reversible I mean all this idea of of of of a new ritual um value of art for my case theater in the six from the 60s
Here in sa paollo also like groups like The oficina but also in the United States living theater kosi in Poland it’s it’s it’s highly interesting and maybe maybe you can maybe you can get out of it with with loua saying this just other you can tell say that’s it’s
Isolated but it goes into other new quasi ritual contexts but there’s something very very um very disturbing about the role of Art and all this and that’s what I it’s cultural extraction also what I try to say a bit artists there to train the new post industrial
Subjects they should go to the dance performances to to develop their skills and um art should train new relations but then you relational Arts but then again who Cates those spaces who can go there who can afford to go there where does the energy come from who cleans up afterwards all this
Question of in institutional critique of art then new the new discussions transformed into infrastructural critique they’re highly important that’s why I wanted to mention um L and ukes and it’s of course a long discussion about it I think the role of art is highly highly um ambivalent nevertheless
I think that the notion of of that’s the basic notion of Aesthetics as I say this the way that world is perceived and and and world is also constructed worlding a sway what have it I think that’s really something very important when we talk about extractivism you cannot only talk
About economy because then we are already in in way you have just to to and that’s when I want to be optimistic and I thought you brought wonderful examples here there another role of art yeah so sorry too but okay so I can’t answer your question do it Cofe okay I thought
You okay this is but this is even more difficult because this is also out of when when then when the things get out of context when they become art that’s what K is interested in and that’s what happens now of course they have they all have functions you can see can somebody
Can explain it to you the function of all this but you there are tourist in the rur area the former workers show you what it was how it worked but there’s something else that is transmitted and and I’m interested in what this is what this uncanniness what this dizziness is
That this violence and it could talk a long time now here but I I would I would propose to go back to Bab and when he says that around 1500 Reformation time it’s when also the conquista began Christianity was transformed into capitalism and a knew like a new whole
New idea of of of of credit and guilt was was developed and the idea of fate and then he says fate is the violence of n nature in in in in in history in in the Barack in the book on Barack and and and then later on he takes us up when
Talking about the 19th century about this huge infrastructures the Iron Works the railways it say it’s this strange feeling that everything that’s just a few days few years old is antique it’s immediately antique how does it come and I think it’s it’s this kind of of of of
Temporality that has to do with with with with credit economy with fate with guil could talk hours about could give Benjamin and won’t do this no that that comes back again in the in the in the passage the AR project he’s he’s looking for it there he’s researching it but
He’s he’s reing this where this disiness come from where this idea of an immediate antiquation of those those ruins of extractivism comes from and I think it has to do with this overlapping times of progress and and those immediate contact with all those have to imagine Timothy Mo Mitchell writ it
Somewhere I had it in the introduction but I don’t have it here how many cubic meters how many years I think it’s 45 years of of of of of life on Earth that are burned in one year this are the numbers from from from 89 and I think
This this is this this this uh this this credit Global Credit economy guilt context burning burning everything progress and burning all what’s left from pre prehistoric life somewhere there but I have to would have to talk hours of Benjamin to to get closer to this thank you for the
Question thank you and I didn’t want to interrupt you so Gloria now then barar and then barit yes well thank you very much for your presentations quite interesting um I have a question for your true um maybe from another for a different perspective but do you have idea how many how many art
Places were in the in the Ura how many the number of activities and for instance and had it or has now ER an impact in the social and in the cultural life of the area that is the question thank you and barara sorry yeah thank you also and it’s also
A great continuity to our discussions last week um my perspective is more focusing on socio environmental perspective on extractivism and if you look at extractivism and I like very much what you said Flavia because of course there are multiple uses of a nonhuman environment but the the issue
Of extractivism is the system in the sense of being a coupled system um and the ebility is irreversible um and the fact the fact that you’re isolating an element of environment valuating it and disconnecting it so I think there is an issue of rupture and irreversibility um and um it would be
Interesting to think if this is the same if you look for example at collecting institutions um I would say yes because if you look at anthropological collections you’re disconnecting reconnecting you’re really taking one element out and putting it and valuating it in very specific ways and that means
Uh that you make a lot of other things invisible so extractivism somehow put at Stakes our Notions of temporality and speciality because it’s a conflation of past present and future somehow the cold example is a good one but we can have many others um and
Um I think this is something that is at least for me it’s complicated to think of because um uh my more ethnographic studies where I did also ethnography of mining companies um but basically you have also if you would include for example geologist or whatever you have is solo you have overlapping and
Fragmentation of different cartographies I would say and temporalities because there always different um glasses on how to look it and um in that sense um my feeling is that extractivism is a huge Machinery of making things invisible and also are temporal and even are spatial so so so so so the logic
Behind that um if you look for example how political decision makers speak on mining Pro projects no um and in that sense um I was thinking about the nonvisible the nonp perceivable the limits of translation um because if you look for example at the Salas and lithium mining from the local perspective
It’s one type of extractivism if you discuss with those guys having to negotiate energy transition in the green deal from German side for example it’s another look at lithium but still they talking about lii so that was something I was somehow thinking about the limits of what you cannot translate
And this is a little bit related to the difficulties to grasp from an anthropological point of view Concepts such as art and Aesthetics who are also specific strategies of making something translatable and um yeah maybe you can reflect on that and relate it to that different knowledge practices because
What we are talking about in anthropology you would address it as different knowledge practices somehow to put it in very general terms no knowledge very Broad and um um yeah um thinking about those cartographies G will be next year in Berlin at the house so it would be it would be interesting
Project to compare KAS and and hak just in that sense of the question that came up for me the in yeah this nomadism but at the same time the limits of Translation thank you again thank you B back sorry um thank you very much from from my side also for your inspiring talks um I’ve got a short question for y in different um moments of your uh talk you mentioned um The Aquatic element and uh I found this very The Aquatic The
Aquatic element water and I found this very interesting you showed also the the photographs the map of of the ru kit as at the in L um so I was um I was wondering or this project of um how did you call it um artificial reconstruction
Of the riverb so I was wondering if um there’s a special role of of water in this project of um aesthetization of of um this area um also in the in the um sense of of the sensorial of the ensus um yeah that’s it thank you Barrett is there any other
Question sorry that I’m saying I’ve forgotten one point nobody of you spoke about technology and you cannot it sorry but um I was thinking that you cannot understand extractivism without technology so it’s a whole technological system infrastructures have been mentioned but maybe that would be also interesting to reflect on that yeah you
Spoke sorry okay so I give each one of you two minutes to Respond Trav territory Extractivism traveling territory I entangled histories and practices this is different For for Okay yeah thanks um yeah glorious question how the question was how many places were there before the a lot always a lot always a lot of theater a lot of working theaters a lot of um this this the thing is that the structure changed with all the state
Money coming in um to build new centas like in the TL or the festival huge Festival the choreographic center this this attracted another scene this attracts an international art scene and so the on the local theaters are more into Nostalgia doing doing what oh life was great when we still minors and all
This and this is a strange divide and the the the the high-end art institutions they do not deal at all now they now they started like two years ago the P TOA and the huge Dance Center made the first Festival on on on extraction or whatever but for for a long time they
Was sitting there on the forarm of mine and doing like International dance whatever high and stuff but there are a lot and there’s still a lot but there’s a bit a division the the the the local didn’t really like all the huge projects coming in but it’s it’s yeah it’s
Extremely danc I think it had most theater has more theaters than than Paris and London together the region it’s extremely dense um second thing about knowledge yes definitely you can also talk about knowledge but I was always say yeah that’s why I love so bom Garden so much the sensus cognition
Knowledge is not not only something that you no but it also affects the way you sense the world perceive the world so that and the Aesthetics come in so we can discuss a long time if you’re talking about Aesthetics and knowledge but I think they’re inter inter Twi um
Uh about water yeah thank you this is very very interesting because there’s a lot of money in this the huge because the ru is a very tiny River and there know there five million people but always it’s huge and was always this tiny River so huge infrastructure about
Water securing water and then the mire where all the the the H went in the Reconstruction of the mire this intergenerational project it’s not no they got this pumping station they planed in 68 it’s open in 21 it’s and it’s colleague of mine who is a curator
Was there who forand nobody knows of them they earn heaps of money because they they’re responsible for freshwater access and this is highly interesting there’s an artist a young artist now alen Schmo who’s made working about the seaw system with with cameras very interesting put another artist Daniel Ker
Kind of problematic work but also interested in all this water supply of the region with with um virtual reality so I could this is this is really interesting that’s not been a huge Pro Part in the um aesthetization of the the remnants in in the EB m park yet it’s
More Technical and edification was more the the huge construction that the cathedrals and all this but now new artists like also deal with it what was the fin technology yes of course Technologies um Technologies are also cities we were talking a lot about of course about indigenous Andor but here we’re also
Living on in in EXT an environment curent by extractivism so Paul the the whole idea of the city is to transport coffee coffee from the pantti to Europe and that’s how the infrastructures look like so I think we also have to be aware that exective is not something that
Happens in some reot places but thank you Yan um fand final words um I’ll begin agreeing with you the the question of uh extractivism being a system but uh what I was trying to address is that uh that system has um it it’s the same uh we can connect the the
System the economic system to the cultural system because they both depart from the same separation which is um which is uh depolarization of of subject and object so uh what is in is in at stake uh in experiment with this or what glycera is doing
Is uh it’s not uh uh and that’s why I I disagree or I have a problem with the idea of healing or uh cure or because it’s it’s a bigger effort of uh having a strategy of uh shifting paradigms uh which is addressing this dichotomy which in the at the bottom of
Of those systems and operations so um when um when Getta is uh doing her research uh through uh European um uh institutions and museums and and and uh collections the the question is to awake technologies that are there but not uh visible or not um practice it so it has
To do uh What uh with what she calls Cosmo techniques uh that come from this encounter with an agent and that’s new materialism comes here that that object is an agent that uh uh tells that um teaches uh how it is made and that knowledge which is sensuous which is
Practical uh can can come again in the body so uh it’s about uh Awakening the objects and breaking this separation between subject and object uh which is at stake and that’s why I think Art Is Here crucial because it is um we can say a model of uh of knowledge that can
Overcome uh what science has separated and what uh economy has deled upd dat so that’s why I believe the importance of us thank you so much and to all of you the panelists for these um presentations and also the debate and for your questions and I wish you a good coffee
And come back here in half an hour