Symposium
Transformation 22: Symposium on artistic research in a time of change
Swedish Research Council and Luleå University of Technology.
Vetenskapens hus, Luleå, Sweden
17-18.11.22

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Ignacio Acosta and mirko nikolić
Let’s talk about extractivism, can we? Critical practice at the time of “security” and “sustainability” paradigms in raw materials industry

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Abstract
A big policy shift is taking place across the Global North, with governments and industries making a rapid “shift” from fossil fuels towards decarbonised economies and energy grids. This urgent and needed transition, however, is underpinned by significant socio-environmental issues. Low-carbon technologies are all highly reliant on minerals, which are set to be procured by the mining industry, a largely destructive and unjust industry.

Across the peripheries of the Global South, and increasingly of the Global North, exponential rise in mining projects is met with local and translocal opposition, communities seeking to protect their natural environments, livelihoods and culture. With the dynamics of “shock capitalism,” the governments and the industry often fast-track processes, police and criminalise activists, and, increasingly, “greenwash” projects and through ever more complex schemes engineer a “social licence to operate.” (Dunlap & Verweijen, 2021). This tendency of equating extraction with sustainability is compounded with an intensifying attempt of principally richer nation-states to (re)define mining as central to “security.” (Riofrancos, 2022)

The two of us have in our individual practices been following the developments of the mining industry in different geographies for years now, with particular focus on environmental justice struggles. We observe that it is getting more complicated and sensitive to relate with frontline communi-ties. On the one hand, they are under immense socio-psychological pressure from extractive expansions. On the other, being an urban academic/artist is a constantly complicated situatedness, since academic and cultural infra-structures and actors are sometimes involved in more or less visible opera-tions which can be likened to normalisation or validation of extractivism.

In this state of things, we believe that long-term and ethical art/documentary strategies can offer new ways of re-examining global ecology through local and Indigenous knowledge. In our shared discussion, through this experience and the lens of our ongoing AR projects, we will discuss and invite a conversation around these questions:

Within the sharpening hegemonic consensus that more mining is neces-sary (e.g. for national security), how can artists-researchers maintain a space in the society for radical critique of extractivist model?

How do we divest from contributing “fixes” or “solutions” to the mining sector, i.e. making it more “responsible,” and challenge the mainstream logic and political paradigms?

How can AR with a critical approach be used to document, analyse, discuss and provide a basis for asserting indigenous knowledges in the context of the nation-state and climate change debate dominated by state and industry actors?

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Link to Symposium
Link to Program

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