Post-Extractivist Legacies and Landscapes Conference

Cover Image Credit: "Over Turn". oil and mixed media on canvas, 2021, Judy Carroll Deeley.

Conference Abstract: The longevity and adaptability of historical extractivist and colonialist logics underpin neo-extractivist development in all corners of the world. At the same time, artists and communities are presenting unique challenges to the persistence of these extractivist histories while working towards possibilities for the future.

Through critical engagement with community and multi-modal artistic approaches, this five-day symposium considers the cultural, social, environmental, and economic crises associated with extractivism. Considering both the metaphoric and methodological contexts and consequences of extractivism, we seek to generate new modes of analyses to investigate established discourses of extractivism. The symposium will include roundtables on activist art and extractivism, methodologies concerning extractivism, socialist responses to extractivism, critical and cultural approaches to energy extractivism and the future of renewables, panel presentations from the project partners’ case studies, as well as a suite of panels on topics including resistance to extractivist activities in Latin America, the relationship between coercive colonial labour exploitation in the Cape and the establishment of a labour pipeline to the mines, and community engagement in the wake of newly proposed extractivist projects, among others.

Draft Schedule:

Wednesday 5 July

9-10 Roundtable 2 — Methodologies concerning Extractivism, convened & chaired by Sarah Comyn (co-sponsored by the Irish Research Council MINERALS project)

Speakers:

Elizabeth Miller (UC Davis)

Macarena Gómez-Barris (Brown University)

Iyko Day (Mount Holyoke College)

10:15-11:15 Concurrent Panels 2a + 2b

Panel 2a — PhD Poster Panel, chaired by Megan Kuster & Hedda Askland

Speakers:

Poulomi Choudury (University College Dublin) - ‘Meat as Ecohorror: Exploring the Ecological Concerns of Animal Agriculture’

Caleb O'Connor (University College Dublin) - ‘Queering Urban Ecologies: Rehabilitation and Resistance in Contemporary Indigiqueer Ecopoetics’

Katie Donnelly (University College Dublin) - ‘Mining and Magic: Digging for Gold in the Colonial Fairy Tale’

Sophie Nichols (remote, University of Newcastle) - ‘Legacy, stewardship and place attachment: elder, land and landscape protection at the mine frontier’

Elizabeth Watts (remote, University of Newcastle) - ‘Barriers to sustainability in coal mine closure’

Emma Clifton (remote, University of Newcastle) - ‘Coal street: embodied collective perceptions of contemporary deindustrialisation’

Panel 2b — Digital Extractives, chaired by Sarah Comyn

Speakers:

Sara R. Ahmed (Sapienza Università di Roma) - ‘Mapping Void Landscapes: Critical Representations of Post-Extraction’

Helena Wee (Birkbeck University of London) - ‘Smart Sponge Cities, Silicon Archipelagos and the Digital Silk Road’

11:45-13:30 Panel 3 — Narrating Extractivism, chaired by Anne Fuchs

Speakers:

Uhuru Phalafala (University of Stellenbosch) - ‘Poetic Imaginaries of Extractive Violence and Black Feminist Registers of Repair: The case of Lemohang Mosese’s film This is not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection’

Inna Sukhenko (University of Helsinki) - ‘Spiritualities of Tierratrauma and Nuclear Waste Management: Literary Imaginaries of “Nuke” Mining in U.S. Nuclear Fiction’

Joseph P. L. Davidson (University of Warwick) - ‘Utopia in the shadow of the mine: Extractive and anti-extractive visions of liberated worlds in utopian fiction’

Maddie Sinclair (University of Warwick) - ‘Extractive Eco-Horror in the Fiction of Mariana Enríquez and Samanta Schweblin’

14:15-15:30 Concurrent Panels 4a+4b

Panel 4a — Coercive Colonial Labour Extraction: Demilitarisation, dispossession, and the labour pipeline in 18th and 19th century South Africa, convened by Linda Mbeki, chaired by Megan Kuster

Speakers:

Linda Mbeki (University of Cambridge)

Antonia Malan (remote, independent scholar)

Glynn Alard (remote, Iziko Museums of South Africa)

Panel 4b — Mining and Resistance in Argentina and Latin America, convened & chaired by Erika Teichert

Speakers:

Erika Teichert (University College Dublin)

Marian Sola Alvarez (remote, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Argentina) D

Débora Cerutti (remote, IRES-CONICET, Argentina)

16:00-17:15 Roundtable 3 — Socialist Responses to Extractivism, convened and chaired by Eeva Kesküla (Tallinn University)

Speakers:Linda Kaljundi (Tallinn University) - sharing the background of the film Orchidelirium, for which she was the consultant

Film Screening of Estonian artist Kristina Norman’s short film, Orchidelirium: An Appetite for Abundance

Anna Ptak (Warsaw University and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw)

Saara Mildeberg (Tallinn University) - topic: cultural tourism in Sillamäe, Estonia

Thursday 6 July

9:30-10:45 Concurrent Panels 5a + 5b

Panel 5a — Collaboration for Restoration: Reimagining Post-Mining Landscapes, convened & chaired by Hedda Askland

Speakers:

Hedda Haugen Askland (University of Newcastle), Meg Sherval (remote, University of Newcastle) and Emma Clifton (remote, University of Newcastle) - ‘Filling the void: imagining post-mining landscapes in the Hunter Valley’

Sam Spurr (remote, University of Newcastle) & Sandra Carrasco (remote, University of Newcastle) - ‘“Don’t be afraid”: care and courage in climate restoration, repatriation and re-composition’

David Dhert (University of Newcastle) & Hedda Haugen Askland (University of Newcastle & the University of Antwerp) - ‘Visual storytelling: film and the search for sacred places’

Panel 5b — Documenting Resistance and Toxicity, chaired by Megan Kuster

Speakers:

Iva Peša (remote, University of Groningen) - ‘Living with Mining Legacies on the Copperbelt and the Witwatersrand’

Lauryn Anderson (University of Cambridge) - ‘Mining the Land, Mining Words: Muriel Rukeyser’s Documentary Poetics of the Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster’

Luciana Massaro (remote, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) - ‘From mud to art: (post-) mining landscapes and communities in Brazil’

11.15-12:30 Panel 6 — Dimensions of Extractivism: The proposal for a new coal mine in West Cumbria, convened by David Morris & Suzanne Wilson, chaired by Ceri Rachel Holman

Speakers:

David Morris (University of Central Lancashire)

Suzanne Wilson (University of Central Lancashire)

Ceri Rachel Holman (University of Central Lancashire)

John Whitton (University of Central Lancashire)

Ioan Parry (University of Central Lancashire)

13:45-14:45 Panel 7 — From Extraction to Regeneration: Arts and Community Engagement in the Wake, convened by Joseph Campana and Weston Twardowski

Speakers:

Joseph Campana (Rice University)

Weston Twardowski (Rice University)

15:15-16:30 Roundtable 4— ‘Future Post-Extractivist Landscapes? Critical and cultural approaches to historical energy extraction and the future of renewables’, convened & chaired by Treasa De Loughry & Tomas Buitendijk

Speakers:

Treasa De Loughry, convener (University College Dublin)

Tomas Buitendijk, convener (University College Dublin)

Sharae Deckard (remote, University College Dublin)

Pat Brereton (Dublin City University / iCRAG)

Patrick Brodie (University College Dublin)

Renee Hoogland (Southampton University)