Aggravation, Labour, Ambivalences

This conversation in the framework of WIENWOCHE 2024 comprises contributions from different areas exploited for coal or mineral mining, mostly in colonial contexts: South Africa; the Swedish part of Sápmi; the Américas; and Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. Building on intersectional feminisms, based on groundbreaking works such as Macarena Gómez-Barris’ Extractive Zone, we revisit different mining areas from the perspectives of women*, Indigenous people and workers, impacted by the appropriation of their lands or their work in the mining sector. We will focus on the situations and agencies of local people and seek (and hopefully provide) some footing amidst literally destabilized grounds of mining, aggravations of capitalist extraction, ecological devastation, and ongoing colonization by resisting extractivisms through our feminist approaches. In relation to artistic practices in various formats, we will tackle violent trans-corporealities, as well as emancipatory agencies.

Bermet Borubaeva, public policy analyst, curator, and co-founder of Bishkek School of Contemporary Art, Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan

Lis-Mari Gurák Hjortfors, activist and ethnologist, Koskullskulle/Malmberget/Gällivare in the Swedish part of Sàpmi

Samantha Hargreaves, ecofeminist activist, active in WoMin, South Africa

Moderation / co-organization:
Karin Reisinger, researcher, architect, and curatorial practitioner, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

The panel discussion took place online on 18th September 2024.