The ecology of extractive practices is a poisonous one. In Chile as in Sámi areas in northern Sweden, mining activities by multinational corporations are both visibly and invisibly shaping the landscape, intoxicating water, soil and air while displacing agricultural and indigenous communities. The excavation, extraction and exploitation of minerals – justified by the promise of immediate accelerated economic growth – means that spaces inhabited by communities become ravaged by desertification, contamination and expropriation, and sites of political and environmental dispute.
Building on ongoing research into extractive activities in Chile and Swedish Sábme, Tales from the Crust presented existing and new work by Chilean artist Ignacio Acosta, comprising documents, films, photographs, maps and objects. The programme honed in on ways in which local and transnational acts of resistance made use of technologies (such as drones) in order to monitor the impacts of extractive industries and develop micropolitical strategies. Resistance Labs was a series of discursive events, workshops and broadcasts that brought to the fore existing forms of solidarity between various anti-mining movements, and addressed the role that counter-actions can play on a planetary scale.
Tales from the Crust formed part of Extractable Matters, Arts Catalyst’s thematic strand exploring extractive capitalism and the politics that underlie its spatial infrastructure and logistics. The programme reflected on ways in which capitalism extracts and exploits both material and immaterial resources, such as minerals, labour, data, affects, cultures and resistance. Through exhibitions, artist residencies and public programmes, Extractable Matters provided a polyfunctional context for discussions inquiring how extractive infrastructures – as well as borders, conflicts and trades attached to them – impose uneven maps of power. Other participants in the programme included FRAUD (artist-researchers Audrey Samson and Francisco Gallardo) and the Alternative School of Economics, a collaboration between artists Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck.
The works presented in Tales from the Crust has emerged from 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); and Drone Vision, a research project based at the Hasselblad Foundation / Valand Academy, Gothenburg University led by Dr Sarah Tuck.
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Public Programme
Resistance Lab #1 | Deep Time Story – 24 October 2019
Resistance Lab #2 | A View from Above: Technologies of Agency and Conflict, Talk and Workshop with Sarah Tuck and Nexus – 28 October 2019
Assembly | Extractable Matters – 29 November 2019
London Mining Tour led by London Mining Network – 30 November 2019
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Supported by
Arts Council England, Pluriversal Radio and the CREAM (University of Westminster)
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Links
Arts Catalyst website
Traces of Nitrate website
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Media
Pluriversal Radio
Resistnace Labs soundcloud
Zone of Sacrifice: Interview to archeoastronomer Patricio Bustamante, Santiago, 2019
Europa: Nueva Geografía Especulación Minera, Brussels, 2019
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Reviews
Ignacio Acosta’s Tales from the Crust by Tom Jeffreys, e-flux Criticism, 2019
Ignacio Acosta’s Tales from the Crust by Diego Chocano, Burlinton Contemporaries, 2019
Tales from the Crust: Portraits of extractive violence and resistance, We make money not art, 2019