GPC STREAMS (#2) Unearthed Foundations
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GPC Online Screen
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The insatiable machine called progress is fed by rocks and minerals. It devours all kinds of stones. Its hunger is evident in the gold that marks economic value, the lithium carried in the pocket, and the coal that powers the city, to name a few examples. It is also evident in the flesh and metal hands that dig into the earth, extracting the rocky matter that serves as foundation to the Capitalocene, its technologies and values. The consequent holes in the ground and gasses in the air are further proof of human’s incapability to respect the material structures and metabolism of the earth.
!Unearthed Foundations" presents three disparate but equally poignant video pieces that deal with specific mined materials and the utilitarian realities that have been ascribed to them. Despite their contrasting approaches—an observational piece, a critical satire and a film essay—these works look upon mineral exploitation with a critical gaze. Sometimes ironic and performative, sometimes documentary and poetic, sometimes quiet and elastic, this program hopes to broaden perspectives on the rocks that have been unearthed in order to shape, construct and support the present moment.
Program
■ KATHARINA SWOBODA: STONES
AT, 2021, 8 min.
What are the minerals that compose a smartphone? Swoboda asked this question and, after the difficulty of reaching a straightforward answer, she embarked on producing this piece. Recorded in the mineralogical collection of the Universalmuseum Joanneum, Stones is not only a journey to the internal landscapes of a smartphone, but also a speculative scientific expedition, a search for constitutive elements, and a portrayal of their destruction.
■ MADELEINE ANDERSSON: DIRTY COAL
DK, 2020, 07:19 min.
In "Dirty Coal", a piece of coal speaks through the body of the artist. Positioned in various lascivious manners within a suggestive-lit mine, the piece of coal looks directly at the camera and confronts the viewer with promises of satisfaction and flirtatious questions. An exercise of new corporeality where Andersson demonstrates what she defines as petrosexuality: a framework to rethink extractive industries through the language of pleasure, lust and sexual hierarchies.
■ REGINA DE MIGUEL: CATÁBASIS
ES/CO, 2020, 73:42 min.
The essay film "CATÁBASIS" takes gold as its thematic axis: from the pulsing mystery of its cosmic origin, to the sites where it exists, the practices that extract(ed) it, or the museum vitrines that nowadays contain it. Going from Spain’s Rio Tinto (one of the most exploited soils on earth), to Colombia’s Chocó (a region ravaged by colonialism, war and mining), and Bogota’s Gold Museum, the film leads us to a poetic act of reflection upon extractive violences and acts of resistance against them.