Resisting) Extractivism
Artist and Theorists on Mining the Planet
Online-lecture series of the cx/Academy of Fine Arts Munich in cooperation with the Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen, Museum of work Hamburg, Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde, Leipzig and the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum, Leibniz Research Museum for Geo-resourcen
Dates: 31.10., 21.11., 28.11. und 12.12.2023
ZOOM Link: https://eu02web.zoom-x.de/j/68143966856?pwd=SVl1TXVBVFZYbHdpR2Q4aEszQUhUQT09
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
In a literal sense extraction means „the forced removal of raw materials and life forms from the earth’s surface, depth, and biospheres“ (Mezzarda/Neilson). It refers in particular to the mining of non-renewable fossil fuels, building materials and raw earth minerals. Extractivism raises this form of extraction as well as the plundering of agricultural land, and oceans, the exploitation of genetic resources, digital data or labour power to the status of a principle (Willow). In this respect, the term designates not only a certain economic model focusing on the export of raw materials but also a central logic of (neo)liberal capitalism serving material and immaterial accumulation. Extractivism shows an upward trend despite it’s devastating ecological and social record.
The lecture series „(Resisting) Extractivism“ brings together contributions by artists and
theorists who, in light of this troubling trend, critically analyze the extractivist logic of globalized capitalism and conceive resistant models. The different artistic and scientific
approaches explore how the exploitative mechanism of Extractivism operates, with which strategies of ap- and expropriation it is connected and in what way such strategies are rooted in the history and persistent presence of colonialism and racism. They visualize the devastating effects of excessive extractivism and imagine or realize postextractivist life forms as well as oppositional aesthetic and activist practices. The Online-lecture series is part of the nationwide, interdisciplinary project “Mining. Extracting the Future”.
Tuesday, 31st of October 2023, 6 p.m.
Extractive Capitalism
Armin Linke, artist, photographer and filmmaker, Berlin
Elizabeth Povinelli, Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University
Tuesday, 21st of November 2023, 6 p.m.
Mining Waste
Design Earth (Rania Ghosn, El Hadi Jazairy), speculative architects, Cambridge, MA/Ann Arbor, Michigan
Myra J. Hird, Professor in the School of Environmental Studies, Queen’s University, Canada
Tuesday, 28th of November 2023, 6 p.m.
Unfortunately, this event will not take place!
White Geology
Otobong Nkanga, artist, Antwerp
Kathryn Yusoff, Professor for Inhuman Geography, Queen Mary Universität, London
Thuesday, 12th of December 2023, 6 p.m.
Decolonial Visions
Imani Jacqueline Brown, artist, activist and researcher, London
Macarena Gómez-Barris, Professor of Social Science and Cultural Studies, Pratt Institute, New York
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Strange Ecologies
public lecture series (online)
organized and moderated by Prof. Nils Norman und Dr. Susanne Witzgall
Time Tuesday or Thursday 7.00–9.15 pm., dates: 08.11., 22.11., 12.01, 24.01. and 26.01. (recap only for students of the academy)
registration: nThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Many conventional environmental and sustainability movements are prone to reproduce
gender binaries, white supremacy as well as patriarchal and capitalist power relations due to their normative perspectives on ‘nature’. Furthermore, poor people, people with
disabilities and people of colour suffer the most from the consequences of natural resources extraction, environmental destruction and climate change. They take up “the body burdens of exposure to toxicities and to buffer the violence of the earth” (Kathryn Yusoff). Queer, feminist and decolonial approaches in theory, the visual arts and activism are therefore fostering a new conception of ecology and a different care for the environment; radically subverting the constructs of race, class, nationality and gender as well as their naturalisation (Nicole Seymour), and offering alternative futures for everyone.
The four-part lecture series “Strange Ecologies” is dedicated to contemporary artistic,
academic and activist approaches of queering and decolonising of ecology. It will
investigate strategies that question normative views and familiar presuppositions regarding ‘nature’ and our human and more-than-human co-existence. The lecture series is not only confined to critique, but also addresses productive practices that relate differently to the environment. These practices encompass among other things: alternative collective agriculture; eco-erotics and other ways of living with damaged landscapes.
Tuesday, 8th of November 2022, 7:00 pm
Queering environmental futures
Lee Pivnik, artist, Institute of Queer Ecology, Miami
Nicole Seymour, Associate Professor of English, California State University, Fullerton
Tuesday, 22nd of November 2022, 7:00 pm
Decolonizing the farm
Fritz Haeg, artist, Salmon Creek Farm, California
Carole Wright, creative urban activist, community gardener, beekeeper and founding
member of Blak Outside, London
Thursday, 12th of January 2023, 7:00 pm
Indigenising Belongings
KimTallBear, Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta
Tuesday, 24th of January 2023, 7:00 pm
Living with disabled Ecologies
Amanda Cachia, art historian, author and curator, San Diego
Tejal Shah, artist and educator, PIr (Himachai Pradesh)
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Caring Co-Existence
Panel with online-lectures by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (London) and Paulo Tavares (Brasilia)
Friday, 22nd of October 2021, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m.
Online-event, please register here: https://wiki.tum.de/x/fgf-Nw
Public inaugural event of our project „Cross Challenge I: Caring Co-Existence“ with online-lectures by the London based artist and designer Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and the Brazilian architect and urbanist Paulo Tavares. The evening will focus on the question how to imagine and foster multi-species cohabitation in the face of “capitalist ruins” (A. Tsing) and a “damaged planet” (D. Haraway). Subsequent to the lectures there will be a short panel discussion. To join the event please register here https://wiki.tum.de/x/fgf-Nw. We will then provide you with the link in time.
Cross Challenge is a joint trans-disciplinary project format between the Young Academy of the Technische Universität München (TUMJA), the Academy of Fine Arts Munich (AdbK/cx), the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF) as well as the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich (HMTM). Students from these four institutions are invited to develop a joint project in small groups. They will receive a small production budget, input from international experts within the framework of workshops and lectures and will be accompanied and supported by lecturers of the partner institutions. Cross-Challenge wants to promote trans-disciplinary research early on and especially the collaboration between scientists and artists, as we believe in its pioneering innovation and transformative potential.
Biographies of the speakers
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is an artist examining our fraught relationships with nature and technology. She has spent over ten years experimentally engaging with the field of synthetic biology, developing new roles for artists and designers. In 2017 Ginsberg completed her PhD by practice, at London’s Royal College of Art (RCA), interrogating how powerful dreams of “better” futures shape the things that get designed. She read architecture at the University of Cambridge, was a visiting scholar at Harvard University, and received her MA in Design Interactions from the RCA. Daisy won the World Technology Award for design in 2011, the London Design Medal for Emerging Talent in 2012, and the Dezeen Changemaker Award 2019. She exhibits internationally, including at MoMA New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, the National Museum of China, the Centre Pompidou, and the Royal Academy. Her work is held in private and museum permanent collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and ZKM Karlsruhe.
Paulo Tavares is an architect, writer, and educator. His work has been featured in various exhibitions and publications worldwide, including Harvard Design Magazine, the Oslo Architecture Triennial, the Istanbul Design Biennale, and the São Paulo Biennial. He is a long-term collaborator of Forensic Architecture and the author of the books Forest Law (2014), Des-Habitat (2019), and Memória da terra (2020). 2019 he was cocurator of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Tavares’ design and teaching practice spans different territories, social geographies and media. He taught design and visual cultures at the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Art at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador in Quito and prior to that led the MA programme at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmith (London). He currently teaches spatial and visual cultures at the University of Brasília in Brazil and leads the architectural agency autonoma, a platform dedicated to urban research and intervention.