Despite Extractivism is the third exhibition co-curated by the Extracting Us Collective, a group of researchers with activist commitments and artistic interests. We (Siti Maimunah, Elona Hoover, Alice Owen, Dian Ekowati and Rebecca Elmhirst) first crossed paths at the University of Brighton in 2018, where we were variously involved in the network WEGO which explores Feminist Political Ecology in theory and in practice. Our own individual research projects explore themes including extractivsm, care, and commoning, and we found a shared interest in exploring how artistic and creative practises can process and communicate these ideas in interesting ways which go beyond the conventions of academia.
We began our journey with a photographic exhibition in Brighton, and we were set to host another in-person exhibition with multiple artists before the pandemic hit. Instead, we took the exhibition online. Although not without its challenges, this has allowed us to collaborate with artists from across the world, to reach more diverse audiences, and to engage in conversations unfolding over time which are not space-dependant.
Our first exhibition was curated with the ONCA gallery team in Brighton, and was entitled ‘Extracting Us. Looking Differently: Feminism, Politics and Coal Extraction’. It was initiated by Siti Maimunah’s experience as an anti coal-mining activist and researcher in Indonesia. Informed by the questions we were beginning to explore as decolonial Feminist Political Ecology researchers, the exhibition examined the politics of coal extraction, taking an intersectional approach and bringing together feminism, ecology, climate change and politics.
The photographs from Indonesia challenged what we saw as the conventional, spectacular and empty aesthetics of landscapes destroyed by extractivism. Instead the photographs showed how families and communities are continually devastated by the impacts of coal mining and abandoned coal pits, which have a colonial legacy linking to the UK where the exhibition was shown. The title ‘Extracting Us’ alludes to the way our attention is shifted in this exhibition to the ‘extraction’ of lives and livelihoods by extractive industries; they do not simply extract natural resources.
The exhibition was accompanied by a workshop, reading group, film screening and talk by Indonesian scholar-activist to create a space for challenging ‘north-south’ narratives and practicing climate justice. As part of our commitment to active solidarity, we invited exhibition visitors to write postcards to the mothers who had lost children to the abandoned coal pits and to local officials in the affected area. These were gratefully received.
Some of these events are described in this webinar.
During the co-curation of this exhibition, we were committed to putting into practice our political and ethical commitments and developed a set of curatorial principles which we have carried through to the following exhibitions.
As with our previous exhibitions, we invited the Despite Extractivism contributors to consider how their work can follow our guiding principles:
• The exhibition brings together artistic and creative contributions that explore everyday community experiences of and responses to extractivism, and/or engage in ongoing conversations around extractivism, communities and care, in its various forms and registers.
• It includes three core aims:
– to challenge ‘north-south’ and ‘producer-consumer’ narratives on extractivism
– to listen to perspectives from those most affected, and develop actions of solidarity and resistance across countries and continents
– to challenge the viewer to make (sometimes unexpected) connections and develop solidarity (e.g, inviting the viewer to take specific actions or connect with the community
• The exhibition thinks about extractivism and care in terms of materials from (and of) the earth, and considers the experiences of humans and the rest of the natural world.
• The exhibition includes narratives of resistance where possible/relevant, and avoids relying on pathos that might develop an ‘us/them’ feeling
• The exhibition will work with quality materials while also challenging ‘professional’ or ‘distanced’ kinds of aesthetics
The following year, we launched an open call for contributors for and Extracting Us Exhibition to be held during the POLLEN political ecology conference in Brighton. Due to Covid-19, we took the decision to move the exhibition online.
In this exhibition, we wanted to include others in our coversations about the feminist political ecologies of extractivism. We brought together creative work and reflections from fourteenartists-activists-researchers in relation to diverse extractive contexts. In a series of conversations accompanying the exhibition, we found common threads and interesting questions emerging from our various experiences and insights. As curators, we curated six themes related to feminist political ecology as ways of exploring the exhibition.
You can visit the online exhibition in our archive, and continue to build connections between these works and those in Despite Extractivism.
Through these exhibitions, we began to get a sense of some of the particular ways extractive industries undermine lives and livelihoods, as well as the ways of thinking about or being in the world which might contain some clues as to what the opposite of extractivism might be. As part of the 2019 online exhibition, we explored several connecting themes including that of ‘care’, which also relates to the theme of ‘agency’. ‘Care’ crops up in our own research projects in different ways, and we were fascinated to further explore how care – as part of community life, as activism and as creativity – is practiced in extractive contexts, despite and sometimes because of extractivism.
We invited previous contributors to consider the themes and ideas behind ‘Despite Extractivism’, as well as inviting new contributions. We also worked with the fantastic digital designer and curator Celina Loh. It is always exciting to have your ideas reinterpreted or expanded, and we look forward to exploring the exhibition together in the coming months. We hope both the contributors and the exhibition visitors can also be part of this process, and we invite you to explore the ‘connections’ feature of the exhibition to share your thoughts, and to join our events. We hope to work together, publishing the collective findings arising from this co-inquiry.
Please get in contact with us with any thoughts, ideas, reflections or feedback by emailing despite.extractivism.2021@gmail.com , or you can find us on twitter @Extracting_Us
The Extracting Us exhibition and conversation series is co-curated by Siti Maimunah, Elona Hoover, Dian Ekowati, Alice Owen and Rebecca Elmhirst with critical insight and support from independent curator Celina Loh. Online exhibition designed and developed by Celina Loh with the Extracting Us Collective.
This project is made possible by support from ONCA Gallery, the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics at the University of Brighton, the Wellbeing, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity research network funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 764908), and collaboration with the Women in Action on Mining in Asia (WAMA) collaborative network and the ‘Sustainable’ Development and Atmospheres of Violence: Experiences of Environmental Defenders project funded by The British Academy.
WEGO-ITN (Wellbeing, Ecology, Gender and cOmmuny International Training Network) is an EU-funded research network contributing to the political ecology, feminist studies, human geography, anthropology, and development studies’ understanding of extractivism, commoning, care, communities, livelihoods, embodied subjectivities and resistance to development. WEGO-ITN is made up of scholar-activists working on feminist political ecology from ten institutions in six European Union countries: Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom and ten institutions from eight countries for training and secondments: Australia, India, Indonesia, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, Uruguay and USA.
The Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics (SECP), based at the University of Brighton, undertakes interdisciplinary research to address global and planetary challenges such as climate change, human migration, social inequalities and resource access or depletion. SECP explores the environmental, spatial and cultural dimensions of ecological and social challenges in specific places, to offer new knowledge and practice for the creation of more sustainable and socially just societies.
ONCA is a Brighton based arts charity that bridges social and environmental justice issues with creativity. ONCA promotes positive change by facilitating inclusive spaces for creative learning, artist support, story-sharing and community solidarity. ONCA Gallery works with artists, educators and organisations to co-deliver exhibitions, events and workshops that explore social and environmental issues.
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As with the Extracting Us exhibition, we invited the Despite Extractivism contributors to consider how their work can follow our guiding principles:
• The online exhibition brings together artistic and creative contributions that explore everyday community experiences of and responses to extractivism, and/or engage in ongoing conversations around extractivism, communities and care, in its various forms and registers.
• It includes three core aims:
– to challenge ‘north-south’ and ‘producer-consumer’ narratives on extractivism
– to listen to perspectives from those most affected, and develop actions of solidarity and resistance across countries and continents
– to challenge the viewer to make (sometimes unexpected) connections and develop solidarity (e.g, inviting the viewer to take specific actions or connect with the community
• The exhibition thinks about extractivism and care in terms of materials from (and of) the earth, and considers the experiences of humans and the rest of the natural world.
• The exhibition will include narratives of resistance where possible/relevant; and avoid relying on pathos that might develop an ‘us/them’ feeling
• The exhibition will work with quality materials while also challenging ‘professional’ or ‘distanced’ kinds of aesthetics
Despite Extractivism assembles expressions of care, creativity and community from diverse sites of extraction and geographical contexts. Extractivism is characterised by the violent accumulation of resources, which often devastates and disrupts affected communities and the natural world. Collectively, the works in this exhibition illuminate and explore ways of questioning, subverting and resisting the logics and impacts of extractivism.
Despite Extractivism is part of the ongoing ‘Extracting Us’ collective journey exploring the diverse, uneven but sometimes connected ways in which resource extraction also extracts from communities. It is an invitation to explore questions around extractivism and its logics, but also to explore the already-existing alternatives. How do communities and creatives (struggle to) cultivate care for nature and for each other despite extractivism? Can sites of extraction be a fertile ground for alternatives? Can artistic interventions help foster new sensibilities and solidarities with distanced extractive contexts?
Like weeds growing through the cracks in concrete, and in their flourishing slowly forcing the cracks to widen, the contributors to Despite Extractivism scatter here their seeds of ways of thinking or being in extractive contexts.
There are stories of artists who are involved with communities inhabiting landscapes threatened by destructive projects, imagining and practising ways of being which subvert and resist extractivism: V’Cenza Cirefe’s Counter-mapping in the Sperrins (resisting gold mining in Northern Ireland), Chesney’s Down The Line (resisting the HS2 railway in England) and Federico Pardo’s forthcoming contribution (resisting gold mining in Cajamarca, Columbia).
There are illuminations of other tactics of resistance, from the creativity of the Kartini Kendeng women ecological defenders and their portrayals by Dewi Candraningrum (resisting cement mining in Java, Indonesia), to the counter-mapping initiative by the Pari Island community, JKPP and collectives to stop extractive tourism (Seribu Islands, Indonesia).
There are explorations of the uneven geographies of extractivism, with Karin Edstedt’s (Title) embroidery depicting the disproportionate environmental injustices of mining on indigenous communities (copper extraction conflict in Laver, Sápmi; coal mining in Kalimantan, Indonesia), and Sandro Simon’s audiovisual work Bidonmondes drawing attention to the omnipresence of extractivism through the everyday repurposing of imported palm oil canisters in the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal (originating from extractive palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia).
There are intimate accounts of uprooting due to extractive projects, accompanied by the persistent determination to build or rebuild lives in Between Rivers by Daniel Macmillen Voskoboynik (Intergenerational care and multidimensional extractivism, Russian Urals), This is my Home by Maria Rosa Pessoa Piedade & Marilene Ribeiro (dispossession caused by the Belo Monte dam, Brazil) and In the Forest We Believe by Albertus Vembrianto (Covid-19) exacerbates migration from a coastal area affected by gold mining waste, Papua, Indonesia).
Finally, there are invitations to engage with practises and performances which inspire embodied reflection on the destruction and destabilising effects of extractivism in distanced contexts: Arabel Lebrusen’s Toxic Waves II (in response to deadly failure of a dam at the Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine in Minas Gerais, Brazil ) and Choules+Roisner’s REGOLITHIC (in response to global extraction).