The Despite Extractivism online exhibition 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.Can artistic interventions help foster new sensibilities and solidarities with distanced extractive contexts? Can sites of extraction be a fertile ground for alternatives?

Accompanying the exhibition, our events series is an unfolding opportunity for collective learning and solidarity building with artists, activists, academics, communities and active audiences.

Between an online launch event and a closing event, three webinars will explore the stories, ideas and practises of the Despite Extractivism contributors and the communities they engage with. The events, featuring performances, presentations and discussions, focus in turn on expanding but intersecting scales, from the body to the global. Presenters and further information to be announced.

Welcome

Thursday 20th January |12-1.30pm (UK)

The curatorial collective will be joined by contributors to launch the website and open the exhibition to the public. Together we will take a guided journey through the online exhibition spaces, meet the artists and explore the themes and questions at the heart of the exhibition.

Embodiment

Thursday 27 January |12-1.30pm (UK)

How can embodied, sensory or emotional experiences evoke new sensibilities to distanced extractive realities? Sharing participatory performances and discussion, contributing artists Arabel Lebrusan and Luce Choules invite us to explore their practises as responses to and ways of resisting extractivism:

Arabel Lebrusan. Toxic Waves II. Harvesting empathy and coping with ecological grief through drawing. 

Toxic waves II, is an online participatory drawing performance where participants are invited to draw to the beat of a metronome the shape of a wave with a repetitive line. Please bring to this session paper affixed to a flat surface such as the wall or a table and charcoal/ pen/ pencil, ideally something thick to draw with. www.arabellebrusanart.com

Luce Choules. Remembering and Forgetting the Air. 

Building 'traces' from fragments in their collaborative work REGOLITHIC (Choules+Roisner), Choules will perform a poetic script to voice the space of air – a visible substance circulating in our bodies and carried in our breath.  lucechoules.com

Community

Thursday 3 February |12-1.30pm (UK)

Communities of place are often at the centre of stories about the impacts of and resistance to extractivism. When we ask what and who persists ‘despite extractivism’, the question also invites us to think about what we mean by ‘community’ in our stories.

Sharing their stories of community counter-mapping against extractive developments will be Dewi Sutejo and Moh. Husen from JKPP and Sulaiman from Pari Community in Indonesia, and V’cenza Cirefice and Fidelma O'Kane from Save Our Sperrins resisting mining in the Sperrin Mountains, North of Ireland

The event will have simultaneous Bahasa Indonesian translation.

JKPP and Pari Island Community

JKPP is an Indonesian NGO that works in community advocacy through the participatory map. It was established by a group of activists in 1996. It aims for community territorial jurisdiction through a community participatory map. The community of Pari Island developed a participatory map to counter extractive tourism developments. Sulaiman is part of the community defending Pari Island, and was criminalised during confrontations with companies.

V'cenza Cirefice and Fidelma O'Kane

V’cenza Cirefice has been engaging with communities in the Sperrin mountains, North of Ireland, to understand their resistance to extractivism. Using a methodology of activist engagement, photovoice and counter-mapping, this project is exploring the ways in which people relate to each other and the more-than-human world.

Fidelma O’Kane is from Co. Tyrone where she lives with her husband. They have 4 grown up sons and 4 baby grandchildren. She is a retired lecturer and former social worker. Fidelma is the Secretary of ‘Save Our Sperrins’, an environmental group, campaigning against the Planning Application of a Canadian goldmining company, Dalradian, for a goldmine and processing plant in the Sperrin mountains, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Worlding

Thursday 17th February |12-1.30pm (UK)

Extractivism describes a singular and toxic way of being in and relating to the world. The works presented in Despite Extractivism invite us to relate and act ‘otherwise’ in different ways and through different registers. Working with the Zapatista definition of the pluriverse - ‘the world we want is a world in which many worlds fit’ - this webinar provides a common space to share stories and conversations across our differences.

Closing

Tuesday 8 March - International Women's Day (Time TBA)

This event will bring together the collective learning of the exhibition and accompanying events. Rather than marking the end of the project, the event will consider what new ideas, connections or questions have unfolded and how we might cultivate these.

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Despite Extractivism is the third exhibition organised by the Extracting Us Collective (Siti Maimunah, Dian Ekowati, Alice Owen, Rebecca Elmhirst and Elona Hoover, with curatorial and technical support from Celina Loh ). The collective is part of the EU-funded WEGO-ITN network for Feminist Political Ecology research, which has informed our theoretical approach and curatorial principles and practices. We have also worked with and received support from ONCA, a Brighton based arts charity that bridges social and environmental justice issues with creativity, and the research Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics (SECP) based at the University of Brighton.

Contact: despite.extractivism.2021@gmail.com