EXTRACTING US / DESPITE EXTRACTIVISM
International talks programme / funded invitation (public events with presentations and exhibitions). 2019 – 2022
University of Brighton | Political Ecology Network (POLLEN)

Extracting Us / Despite Extractivism – ‘assembling expressions of care, creativity and community from diverse extractive contexts around the world’

“Despite Extractivism is the third exhibition co-curated by the Extracting Us collective, a group of researchers with activist commitments and artistic interests. The collective first crossed paths at the University of Brighton in 2018, where they were variously involved in the network WEGO which explores Feminist Political Ecology in theory and in practice. Their own individual research projects explore themes including extractivsm, care, and commoning, and they 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.”

“They began their journey with a photographic exhibition in Brighton, and were set to host another in-person exhibition with multiple artists before the pandemic hit. Instead, they took the exhibition online. Although not without its challenges, this allowed them 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.”

2019
“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.”

2020
“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 fourteen artists-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.”

2021-22
“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.”

Extracting Us Collective:
Siti Maimunah, Elona Hoover, Alice Owen, Dian Ekowati and Rebecca Elmhirst

2022 exhibition event:
Embodiment was hosted by Luce Choules and Arabel Lebrusan

Funding support:
Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics (SECP) – University of Brighton, UK
WEGO-ITN – The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, Netherlands
Political Ecology Network – at that time based at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark
ONCA Gallery – Brighton, UK
     

Links:
Link to Extracting Us website
Link to Extracting Us events web page
Link to WEGO-ITN about page
Link to POLLEN about page

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WORK

Remembering and forgetting the air

Performed live online as part of the Despite Extractivism events, scalar theme: ‘Embodiment’, POLLEN & University of Brighton, UK

Quotes:

“It evolked all the senses… I could taste what you were saying, I could see it, I could smell it… it was really a call to action.”

“[the performance] was very textured, there’s a lot of material texture in the voice. It made me feel the rhythm… a cyclicalness in the writing and the performance.”

“How to get things across, especially about embodiment through video space. You were talking about how things land… and I think there’s a very real way in which people’s voices land in the bodies of people listening… something from your material reality is landing in my material reality.”

Also see link to Choules+Roisner exhibition page to view Prelude 1 and Prelude 2 for the emerging REGOLITHIC work by SEL__NOIR collective.