Ignacio Acosta

Mining Monolith builds a constellation of research materials—including photographs, douments, objects and videos—delving into the complexities of mining exploration in the close proximity Parque Andino Juncal, a conservation area located in the Andean Mountains in the region of Valparaíso, Chile

Under the military dictatorship of Pinochet (1973-1990), a mining law was passed which separated land ownership from the mineral resources beneath the Earth’s surface. The "Codigo Minero" thus enables concession owners to mine or ‘explore’, while bypassing the wishes of the surface property owners. The sites of these ecological violations are marked with mining monoliths or survey monuments—pyramidal structures made of concrete and stone that define the territory.

Parque Andino Juncal is a protected area with altitudes reaching 5,000 metres above sea level. It contains a hydric network of glaciers, rivers, streams, Andean vegas, and underground springs. Unique in South America, the area has been recognised as a site of international importance by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and is regarded as an endangered ecosystem.

Mining Monolith draws attention to the chasms that mining exploration—such as that perpetrated by the U.S.-financed mining exploration company Nutrex—leaves behind, and its adverse effects on the glacial ecology of the Andes Mountains, such as the creation of dams that pose a major threat to the hydric network.

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Installation view Inverting the Monolith, MBAL, Le Locle, Switzerland. Image by Lucas Olivet, 2022

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In the video work Inverting the Monolith, 2022 images from camera traps are intermingled with audiovisual material recorded by activists from the netowrk Guardianxs Akunkawa with their mobilbe phones, that denounce the impact Nutrex is having on the glacier systems. Together creates a visual dialogue and multimedia narrative chronicling the progress of mining exploration in the area. The monitoring and documentation of fauna forms part of a wider strategy to contest the mining threat and show the value of conservation within this high-value ecosystem. Inverting the Monolith excavates and highlights the unseen: both the covert mining activities that violate local land laws, and the surveillance work conducted by activists aiming to expose these illegal pursuits using drones and camera traps.

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Mining Monolith, Canchitas, Vega de Nacimiento, Parque Andino Juncal, 2019

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Projecto Caliente, 2020 is a collection of documents collaboratively assembled with environmentalist Tomás Dinges, displaying legal evidence of case of mining explorations concessions by Nutrex.
The video work Bitacora Mineras, 2020 builds a fictional narrative based on the logbooks where park rangers meticulously documented movements of miners between January and February of 2019.

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Supported by
Museum Sinclair-Haus in Bad-Homburg, Germany for the exhibition Ewiges Eis, 2022
Bienal de Artes Mediales de Santiago 2019 The limits of the Earth at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC) Parque Forestal, Santiago, Chile (2020), co-curated by Catalina Valdes and Jean-Paul Felley.
Solid Water, Frozen Time, Future Justice, Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

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Links
Inverting the Monolith video teaser
Projecto Caliente, 2019
Mining Lookbook, 2019

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Exhibitions
Inverting the Monolith, Musée des beaux-arts, 2023
Ewiges Eis, Museun Sinclair Haus, 2022
The Limits of the Earth, Bienal de Artes Mediales de Santiago, 2019

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Partners
Parque Andino Juncal
Alianza Gato Andino
Guardinxs del Akunkawa

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Solid Water, Frozen Time, Future Justice: Photography and Mining in the Andean Glaciers, shortened as Frozen Future is the latest project by Traces of Nitrate (Louise Purbrick, Xavier Ribas, Ignacio Acosta). We have widened our geographical scope to glacial systems of the Central Andes and have returned to the Salar de Atacama. Our focus is also extended through closer collaborations with activists and the use of sound, but photography is still at the centre of our work. Frozen Future experiments with the spatial and temporal collisions that can be created by photography to expose the global relationships, legacies and inequalities of capitalism, colonialism and extractivism. The historical and colonial relation we continue to explore is that between Chile and Britain, which has shaped the contemporary journey of minerals that fuel electric and digital technologies. They may be called ‘green’ yet they are dependent upon highly industrialised mining operations often occluded from public view. Frozen Future studies lithium alongside copper. Mining for both substances has reshaped the living spaces of earthly landscapes and altered the course of waterways. The work of Frozen Future is the documentation of the extractivism of the Earth’s materials and the consequent disruption of its water cycles to seek ecological justice.

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Supported by
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK

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Links
Traces of NItrate

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Frozen Future, Royal College or Art, London
Ignacio Acosta, Royal College of Art, London

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While today forest fires are predominantly seen as a symptom of anthropogenic climate change, seasonal fire management has been part of traditional Indigenous land stewardship for thousands of years.

We ask: What Indigenous/Sámi knowledges are available in regards to wildfires, heat, drought and other impacts from climate change/extreme weather events? How can Artistic research/Visual documentation with a critical approach developed collaboratively can be used to document, analyse, discuss and provide a basis for promoting Indigenous knowledges to the nation state and climate change debate?

In relation to climate change, Indigenous peoples are typically portrayed as as the victims of its negative impacts. And if not, they are usually being ignored entirely. It is not only local and Indigenous people themselves that are obscured and erased, but also their knowledges, local expertise, agency, and traditions of knowledge transmission. Hence, a major focus of this research project are the indigenous people left out from the settler colonial nation discussions, debates and actions; May-Britt Öhman refers to it as invisibilisation, a process which we wish to challenge.

The overall aim of this inter- and supradisciplinary research project is to analyse, document and bring forward local and Indigenous/Sámi stewardship of land—with specific regard to fire management, drought and other aspects of climate change—using a constellation of audio-visual and research materials, including interviews, documents, drones images, 3D maps, photographs, writing and workshops, as means of research, communication and dissemination. Through historical and contemporary lived experiences, the project deepens the notion of Árbeddiehto—used to refer to holistic experienced knowledge of the interdependence and interconnection between humans, nature, animals and spirits—to co-produce knowledge and develop important understandings for much needed change regarding climate change mitigation and heat / drought and fire management.

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This research project is based within the growing field of Indigenous Land Based Education and Knowledge. It is being developed in collaboration with Sámi teacher, author and reindeer herder Gun Aira; Sámi scholar and Professor in Environmental history May-Britt Öhman; and Sámi journalist and documentarist Liz-Marie Nilsen. The project furthermore includes non-Indigenous academic scholars and environmental activists and invites non-Indigenous representatives within settler colonial states to co-produce knowledge and develop an important understanding for much needed change regarding climate change mitigation and heat/drought and fire management. Long-term and ethical art/documentary strategies can offer new ways of reexamining global ecology through local and Indigenous knowledge. The project is situated at Uppsala University, Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism (CEMFOR), in collaboration with the Ájtte Museum, Jokkmokk.

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Supported by
Swedish Research Council for Sustainable development (FORMAS)

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Indigenous perspectives on forest fires, drought and climate change: Sápmi, CEMFOR, Uppsala University
Ignacio Acosta, CEMFOR, Uppsala University

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Links
Liz-Marie Nilsen and Ignacio Acosta Forest & Fires, Sápmi: Interview Palle Erixon, Turberget, Jåhkåmåhkke, Swedish Sápmi, 2018

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Events
NAISA Conference Bådåddjo/Buvvda/Bodø, 2024

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The installation Not a Pearl scrutinises the role of the Kanton of Zug as a global trading hub and offshore paradise for shell companies within the Swiss extractivist landscape. By structuring it as a grid of 36 silkscreen prints and texts, Acosta juxtaposes the architecture of office complexes in the Zug industrial belt with the typology of letterbox companies, the smooth lines of luxury sports cars with the representation of the globe as a material sculptural object in both public and corporate architecture, the visual language of photographic documentation with the material language of archival research.

The title refers to an article titled Glencore isn’t a ‘Pearl’ after all published on NeueZuger Zeitung (30.3.2014), found in the archives of the Commodity Trading Dossier at the Bibliotek of Zug, pictured on the second row along with four other articles whose subject matters range from local resistance groups protesting Glencore’s involvement in serious human rights violations, environmental destruction, tax avoidance, and bribery, to statements from local authorities referring to Glencore as an “Economic Pearl” of the Kanton.

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The research behind the project was compiled using open-source data of companies trading raw materials in Switzerland gathered by Public Eye, open data from Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and archival research at the Bibliotek of Zug.

Not a Pearl was commissioned for the exhibition Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production by Gewerbemuseum Winterthur (22.09.23-21.01.24). The exhibition was curated by artist, author and curator Boaz Levin and Dr. Esther Ruelfs, Head of the Photography and New Media Collection at MK&G. Acknowledgements: Susanna Kumschick, Cathrin Hauswald, Karmele Wigger-Goikolea, Yannick Ringger, Corinne Silva, Ellen Lapper, Rita Kesselring and This Keller.

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Exhibition
Mining Photograhy, Geberwemuseum Winterthur, 2023

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Discussion
Copper Geographies and the role of Switzerland, Geberwemuseum Winterthur

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The installation Not a Pearl scrutinises the role of the Kanton of Zug as a global trading hub and offshore paradise for shell companies within the Swiss extractivist landscape. By structuring it as a grid of 36 silkscreen prints and texts, Acosta juxtaposes the architecture of office complexes in the Zug industrial belt with the typology of letterbox companies, the smooth lines of luxury sports cars with the representation of the globe as a material sculptural object in both public and corporate architecture, the visual language of photographic documentation with the material language of archival research.

The title refers to an article titled Glencore isn’t a ‘Pearl’ after all published on NeueZuger Zeitung (30.3.2014), found in the archives of the Commodity Trading Dossier at the Bibliotek of Zug, pictured on the second row along with four other articles whose subject matters range from local resistance groups protesting Glencore’s involvement in serious human rights violations, environmental destruction, tax avoidance, and bribery, to statements from local authorities referring to Glencore as an “Economic Pearl” of the Kanton.

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The research behind the project was compiled using open-source data of companies trading raw materials in Switzerland gathered by Public Eye, open data from Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and archival research at the Bibliotek of Zug.

Not a Pearl was commissioned for the exhibition Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production by Gewerbemuseum Winterthur (22.09.23-21.01.24). The exhibition was curated by artist, author and curator Boaz Levin and Dr. Esther Ruelfs, Head of the Photography and New Media Collection at MK&G. Acknowledgements: Susanna Kumschick, Cathrin Hauswald, Karmele Wigger-Goikolea, Yannick Ringger, Corinne Silva, Ellen Lapper, Rita Kesselring and This Keller.

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Exhibition
Mining Photograhy, Geberwemuseum Winterthur, 2023

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Discussion
Copper Geographies and the role of Switzerland, Geberwemuseum Winterthur

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Copper is a miraculous and paradoxical metal characterised by high electrical and thermal conductivity. It is an essential element for nearly every human enterprise. Hidden in plastic, behind walls, bound into cables, carried as loose change; copper is everywhere yet rarely seen. Although the metal plays a key role in worldwide information and communication technologies and in the transition to a "green economy", very little attention has been paid to the industry’s impacts on the ecologies in which it operates.

Due to its unique geological configuration in the Andean subduction zone, Chile contains the world’s largest deposits of copper: 27.5 percent of global reserves, mainly located in the Atacama Desert. Around 40% of the world’s copper is produced in Chile. The resulting ecology of extraction in the Atacama has come to be at the centre of a series of political and environmental disputes. Seven of the twenty largest copper mines are in Chile, including the very largest, Escondida, in the Atacama Desert. Chile has one of the highest numbers of recorded conflicts related to mining in Latin America. Amongst the many conflicts that have arisen are protracted legal battles involving, on the one hand, the big multinational corporations that control 70 percent of Chilean copper output, and on the other, the indigenous agricultural communities struggling with growing desertification, water contamination and land expropriation.

Chile has a long history of exploitation from foreign nationals that goes back to colonial times. British capital played a key role in the development of the Chilean economy as a whole, and particularly in the management of its copper and nitrate resources in the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, U.S. investors, such as the Guggenheim brothers, took over the extraction of Chilean minerals. In the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries a mix of multinational corporations together with the state-owned mining corporation Codelco have been responsible for roughly one third of global copper production.
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The corporate town of Chuquicamata, which has the same name as the mine, was designed in the New York offices of the Guggenheim brothers in the early decades of the twentieth century as a model town. More than thirty architects were hired to work out its urban plan. The town was established next to the mine, following the pattern of mining settlements in the U.S. such as Butte, Bisbee and Tyrone. Due to the capitalist nature of mining endeavours, corporate towns are designed ‘to fulfil basic social necessities by maximising profits’. Functionality and profitability were the driving forces behind the growth of corporate towns. While substantially reducing costs by increasing efficiency, the typological standardisation and mass production of modular mining towns also reflects the mechanisation of the mining industry. The production of copper at Chuquicamata increased over time and it grew to become the world’s biggest open-cast copper mine. The town was evacuated in 2007. High levels of pollution, caused by the relentless expansion of the mine, threatened public health. At the time of closure, the 25,000 workers were relocated to the nearby city of Calama where new neighbourhoods were built, following the same corporate strategies of social segmentation and urban fragmentation.

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The Los Pelambres copper mine is controlled by Antofagasta Plc., a Chilean-based mining corporation listed in the London Stock Exchange. The open-pit mine is located 3,800 metres above sea level in the Andes mountains. The mine stores its tailings (fine waste) in the El Mauro tailings dam, the biggest in Latin America, and third biggest in the world. The dam currently holds around 1,700 million tonnes of tailings. A wall of 1,000 metres of compressed sand holds 2,060 million tonnes of toxic waste material just 470 metres above the town of Caimanes. The tailings are located in an earthquake prone zone, which in the event of collapse would only leave the 1,600 inhabitants of Caimanes five minutes to escape before being buried. Residents of Caimanes have for many years expressed concerns over the pollution of the local water supply since the installation of the El Mauro dam. Minera Los Pelambres currently has plans to expand their mine, despite public resistance and the drought.

After copper is ground in the Andes, it is transformed into copper concentrate (raw material for all copper smelters). This black powder is transported to the Port of Pacific, through a pipeline. For this mode of transportation, the company uses large quantities of water as well as gravity to create flows. At the Port of Pacific, the concentrate is dried. The excess water contains high doses of toxins, particularly molybdenum and sulphate that cannot be used in the food chain. To dispose of these toxic liquid residues, a water-intensive monoculture of Eucalyptus specimens from Australia has been planted.
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Copper is then transported from the Pacific as copper concentrate, mainly to Asian markets. It travels and is transformed through a global network of production and exchange that involve diverse geographies of copper.

While mining is a global industry, Britain has a particular place in its networks of extraction; London is home to the head offices of the wealthiest corporations which trade in its stock markets. London is the world’s biggest centre for investment in the minerals industry. Most of the world’s biggest mining companies, and many smaller mining companies, are listed on the London Stock Exchange, including its Alternative Investment Market (AIM). British high street and investment banks, pension funds and insurance companies invest hundreds of millions of pounds a year in scores of mining projects across the globe, connecting working people’s earnings in Britain with the fate of mining-affected communities around the world (London Mining Network).

Copper returns to the territories where it originated from but with added value and in the form of technology.

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The publication Copper Geographies by Editorial RM (2018) invites the viewer on the journey of copper from raw material through stock market exchange value, smelted commodity, capital wealth and recycled material. From the transformed landscapes of the Atacama Desert through a re-imagined voyage to Wales and the City of London, the book documents spaces of circulation, environmental disruption, protest and trade, and makes visible the return of the copper hidden within technological devices to its geographical origins.

The publication presents documentary research in the form of maps, photographs and texts, and offers a critical spatial imaginary for re-thinking the geographies of copper. It includes six written contributions by curators, historians and poets: Andrés Anwandter, Marta Dahó, Tehmina Goskar, Tony Lopez, Louise Purbrick and Frank Vicencio López.

Copper Geographies stems from the practice-based PhD thesis The Copper Geographies of Chile and Britain: A photographic study of mining, carried out between 2012-2016 as part of Traces of Nitrate, a research project developed in collaboration with Art and Design historian Louise Purbrick and photographer Xavier Ribas, based at the University of Brighton and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

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Exhibitions
Intersectional Geographies, Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, UK, 2022
En Paisaje | Experiencia | Producción, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Santiago, Chile 2022
The Climate Emergency in 50 Rounds, Fotobokfestival Oslo, 2020

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Publications
Maja Fowkes, Reuben Fowkes Art and Climate Change (World of Art), Thames & Hudson, London, 2022
Arts contemporains et anthropocène, Edited by Méaux D. and Tichit J. Hernann, Editions Hermann, France, 2022
Photographie contemporaine & anthropocène, Ed. by Méaux D. and Tichit, J. Filigranes Edition, France, 2022
Ignacio Acosta, Copper Geographies , Editorial RM, 2018
Ignacio Acosta The Copper Geographies of Chile and Britain: A Photographic Study of Mining. Phd Thesis, University of Brighton, 2016
Beyond Gated Communities, Edited by Samer Bagaeen, Ola Uduku 2015

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Reviews
Lur Magazinne by Chiara Sgaramella, 2020
Lur Magazinne by Ruber Arias, 2020
De Correspondent by Jan van Poppel, The Netherlands, 2020
Panorama, 2020
Tank Magazine, 2019
Transfer: Global Architecture Platform, 2019

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Capitalism changes everything. It has altered our relationship to the Earth. It has ripped lands apart, torn out their materials and hauled them over the surface of the world as the traffic between nations and within markets.

Extraction and export is the business of capital.

All forms of exchange are acts of appropriation but mining removes material that can never be replaced; taken, transformed and trafficked with no intent to repay.

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Trafficking the Earth is a collaboration between photographer Xavier Ribas, art historian Louise Purbrick and visual artist Ignacio Acosta. Their collective research has documented the movement of mineral wealth of Chile into global markets and European landscapes. Nitrate and copper is their focus. The transformation of these natural resources into industrial materials draw desert and city, slag heap and country house, ruin and regeneration, landscape and archive, Chile and Britain, into the same circuit of capital.

Over the last five years Acosta, Purbrick and Ribas have encountered other artists, photographers, curators, translators and activists and worked alongside them sharing a concern with politics of documenting the inequalities of extractive industries.

Trafficking the Earth is a collection of documents that reproduces historical constellations of appropriation and accumulation, depletion and displacement, violence and its disguise, begun by mining nitrate and copper.

Our work is documentation. Photography is our focus but it is only one type of document in historical and contemporary mining landscapes. A photograph is a trace, an imprint of time and space, but as Walter Benjamin wrote, 'to live is to leave traces' and the documents of nitrate and copper are found in many places, preserved and obscured.

The Atacama Desert, the Pacific ports of Iquique and Pisagua, mining town of Chuquicamata, the slag heaps of Coquimbo, the City of London, the docks of Liverpool, the waterfront of Swansea, First World War munitions factories and battlefields, English country estates and Oxford Colleges may appear as separate geographies yet they are entangled together in the transport and transformations of nitrate and copper.

The rupture of mining the Earth and trafficking in the Earth's substance sets in motion material transformation upon material transformation as the operations of industrialisation and the manipulations of commoditisation use up both land and labour: ore into metal, rock into chemical, chemical into commodity, metal into exchange, natural substance into industrial form, and finally into the arbitrary abstractions of the global market: only a value, merely a share price.

Once nitrate is dug into soil to feed cattle fodder or poured into the explosive mixtures that make dynamite, once copper disappears into cables encased in plastic and is embedded within the intricate internal wiring of lap tops and smart phones, only their market value appears to remain: they are capital; they have become capitalised forms, invisible as anything else.

But nothing ever really disappears. Every act of appropriation is found in the land: in ruins and residue. Ecological contamination is historical evidence. A trace. The entangled geographies of desert, port and city are also entwined histories. Trafficking the Earth traverses past and present, one folds into the other in constant transformation.

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition El Trafico de la Tierra at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo [MAC], Santiago, Chile [08.09.2017 – 12.11.2017] and the symposium Visuality, Materiality and Mining held at MAC on the 08th of September 2017.

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Exhibitions
Image Ecology, C/O Berlin, Germany, 2023
Trafficking the Earth, Bienal de Fotografia do Porto, Portugal, 2021
Reassemblage, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes (TEA), Spain, 2021
El Trafico de la Tierra, Centro de Arte y Naturaleza (CDAN), Spain 2019
Resolution is not the Point, The London Art Fair, UK, 2018
Trafficking the Earth, Museo de Arte, Santiago, Chile, 2017

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Publications
Trafficking the Earth, Intuitive Editions, London – Editorial Gronefot, Santiago, 2017

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This site specific installation at Art Library and Material Archive Sitterwerk Foundation, St. Gallen focusing on the appearance of copper in the collection. Produced during an artist residency that invited artists to respond to the collection, the display combines material copper objects and publications focusing on the transformation of copper alongside the commodity chain. It is divided into four different sections: 1) Alchemy; 2) Transformation; 4) Sustainability; and 4) Art. The intervention was developed within the so-called "dynamic order" of the library, an approach that facilitates a constantly changing position of the books on the shelves by means of RFID technology.

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Part of My ABC is… series is in collaboration with Stella Carlsen, responsible for the sustainable management of Art Foundry St Gallen (Kunstgiesserei). On September 28th there was a presentation and public discussion moderated by Patricia Hartmann. Acknowledgments: Barbara Biedermann, Katalin Deér, Roland Früh, Felix Lehner, Julia Lütolf, This Keller, Julia Walk, Eveline Wüthrich. Workshop series supported by Kanton St. Gallen, Kulturförderung / Swisslos, Stiftung Temperatio, TISCA Tischhauser Stiftung.

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Links
Mein ABC ist elementar
Art Fountry St. Gallen

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From Mars to Venus: Activism of the Future began following an animistic belief that mineral-rich mountains and deserts can communicate because of the strong powers their ores possess. Kiruna – Sweden’s northernmost town, 200 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle—is located in Sápmi, home of the Sámi people. Chile’s Atacama Desert—one of the most arid places in the world—has been inhabited by the Licanantay people for thousands of years. In both regions, Indigenous activists resist the “slow violence” of extractive industries by maintaining their cultural practices and traditional knowledges in an increasingly fragmented territory.

The green transition narrative in these extreme geographies is based on the claim that a substantial increase in metal mining is necessary to meet the material needs of renewable energy technologies and associated infrastructure. In Kiruna, where unjust state policies reiterate colonial patterns, the iron mining industry has historically occupied the traditional lands of the Sámi and affected reindeer herding patterns. White International media celebrates the corporate relocations of the mining town of Kiruna, where communities of over 3,000 households have been forcibly displaced with unfair compensation. This is occurring because the iron ore mine operated by the Swedish state mining company LKAB is destabilising the ground, and as a result the old city is sinking. In addition to the ongoing extraction of iron, recent discoveries of rare earth metals in Kiruna exceed one million tonnes of oxides, making it the largest known deposit of its kind in Europe.

In the Atacama, the natural environment is sacrificed in the name of progress. Copper, historically, and more recently lithium extraction activities—both key to the energy transition and the active materials in rechargeable batteries—are drying up subterranean aquifers and preventing access to fresh water for the Licanantay communities. The expansion of mining projects in these already affected regions has led to a rise in social, environmental, and economic injustices.

The video installation draws upon the scale of these operations by connecting territorial struggles concerning water, biodiversity, and identity loss with space observation. Kiruna is a gateway to the aurora borealis and a key site for studying the Earth’s magnetic field and its interaction with solar wind. The Atacama is a key site for astronomical observation, hosting the world’s largest observatories, some of which are located on the Chajnantor plateau at more than 5,000 metres above sea level.

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From Mars to Venus: Activism of the Future was commissioned on the occasion of Into the Deep: Mines of the Future at Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen, Germany 26.05.2023 – 05.11.2023 curated by Claudia Emmertand Ina Neddermeyer. Developed in collaboration with video editor Lara Garcia Reyne, sound designer Udit Duseja, colourist Paul Willis and writer Ellen Lapper. It features Likanantay and Sámi activists Karen Luza, Maj-Doris Rimpi, Carola Aguilar Cruz, Veronica Moreno, Åsa Andersson and Janne Sirniö.

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Supported by
Zero programme of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation), Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media). Fieldwork supported by AHRC project Frozen Future Royal College of Arts (RCA) / University of Brighton, and the FORMAS-funded project Indigenous perspectives on forest fires, drought and climate change: Sápmi based at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism (CEMFOR), Uppsala University, Sweden.

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Link
From Mars to Venus: Activism of the Future video teaser

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Exhibtion
Into the Deep: Mines of the Future, Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen, 2023

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Publication
Into the Deep, exhibtion catalogue, 2023
Conversation with Ina Neddermeyer, 2023

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Discussion
TBA-21 Academy, 2023

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Events
Conference: Extractivism / Activism, Autograph / Paul Mellon Centre, London, 2024
Transindigeneity: Between Local Specificities and Global Complexities, Global Indigenous Arts Network (GIAN), Universidad de Barcelona, Spain, 2023

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Hygieia Watches Over Us is a site-specific installation composed of a photographic grid and a video interview with Dr. Klaus Baumgart—from Hamburg’s environmental protection initiative Rettet die Elbe, a support group founded in 1978 with the mission to rehabilitate the Elbe from heavy contamination caused by industrialisation.

Forty photographs, arranged in a four-row grid aesthetically and metaphorically link three motifs into an associative network. In the upper row, a chimney of the Aurubis AG rises up into the air, paralleled by the city’s sculpture of Hygieia, the Greek goddess of health. Recalling our current period of contagion, the bronze figure was created by Joseph von Kramer at the end of the nineteenth century after Hamburg’s devastating cholera epidemic of 1892. Erected in celebration of the outbreak’s defeat and clean water, Hygieia stands upon a fountain with her back turned on Hamburg’s City Hall, looking towards the Chamber of Commerce in a nod towards industry and trade.

In the lower rows, detailed close-ups of the fountain are ambiguously interlaced with images of stained rubber suits worn by Aurubis AG’s workers to protect themselves from sulphuric acid. The arrangement juxtaposes these persistent contradictions: the resource- and water-intensive copper industry and its pollutive impact on the Elbe, with the politically charged statue and tainted labour. Analogies arise between the copper parts of the bronze sculpture, oxidised to a green patina, and the traces of dirty work in the copper plant, thus thematising the relationships of industry, politics, and society in relation to water and material consumption.

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Installation view Inverted Pyramid MK&G Hamburg, 2022. Image: Henning Rogge

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Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production was curated by artist, author and curator Boaz Levin and Dr. Esther Ruelfs, Head of the Photography and New Media Collection at MK&G. In cooperation with Kunsthaus Wien, Gewerbemuseum Winterthur and the HFBK Hamburg.

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Links
Interview with Dr Klaus Baumgardt, 2022
Rettet die Elbe

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Exhibitions
Gewerbemuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, 2023
Kunst Haus Wien Museum, Austria, 2022
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Germany, 2022

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Events
Alternative harbor tour, 2022

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Publications
Mining Photography , Spector Books, 2023

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