Creating Worlds Otherwise - Book launch

The Queen Mary Latin America Network and the Centre on Labour and Global Production at the School of Business and Management warmly invite you to a discussion followed by reception to mark the publication of Creating Worlds Otherwise: Art, Collective Action, and (Post)Extractivism by Paula Serafini.

Speakers: Paula Serafini in conversation with Amit Rai

Location: Queen Mary University of London. Graduate Center, 7th floor, GC701 and Terrace. Mile End Rd, Bethnal Green, London E1 4NS.

Free, open event, but registration is required. Please let us know if you can no longer attend the event.

For any questions please email p.serafini[@]qmul.ac.uk

About the book

Extractivism has increasingly become the ground on which activists and scholars in Latin America frame the dynamics of ecological devastation, accumulation of wealth, and erosion of rights. These maladies are the direct consequences of longstanding extraction-oriented economies, and more recently from the expansion of the extractive frontier and the implementation of new technologies in the extraction of fossil fuels, mining, and agriculture. But the fields of sociology, political ecology, anthropology, and geography have largely ignored the role of art and cultural practices in studies of extractivism and post-extractivism.

The field of art theory, on the other hand, has offered a number of texts that put forward insightful analyses of artwork addressing extraction, environmental devastation, and the climate crisis. However, an art theory perspective that does not engage firsthand and in depth with collective action remains limited and fails to provide an account of the role, processes, and politics of art in anti- and post-extractivist movements.

Creating Worlds Otherwise examines the narratives that subaltern groups generate around extractivism, and how they develop, communicate, and mobilize these narratives through art and cultural practices. It reports on a two-year research project into creative resistance to extractivism in Argentina and builds on long-term engagement working on environmental justice projects and campaigns in Argentina and the UK.

It is an innovative contribution to the fields of Latin American studies, political ecology, cultural studies, and art theory, and addresses pressing questions regarding what post-extractivist worlds might look like as well as how such visions are put into practice.

(From Vanderbilt University Press: https://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com/9780826504555/creating-worlds-otherwise/)

About the author

Paula Serafini is Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries in the Department of Business and Society, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London. Her previous publications include Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism (Routledge 2018) and the co-edited volumes artWORK: Art, Labour and Activism (Rowman and Littlefield International 2017) and Arte y Ecología Política (IIGG-CLACSO 2020).

About the discussant

Amit Rai is Reader in Creative Industries and Arts Organisation in the Department of Business and Society, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Rule of Sympathy: Race, Sentiment, and Power, 1750-1860 (Palgrave 2002), Untimely Bollywood: Globalisation and India’s New Media Assemblage (Duke University Press/Oxford University Press, 2009) and Jugaad Time: Ecologies of Everyday Hacking in India was published (Duke University Press, 2019).