Liliana Gómez & Alexander Brust: Arts and Extractivism in the Global Present

The book „Arts and Extractivism in the Global Present“, edited by Liliana Gómez and Alexander Brust, is now available!

Through the lens of contemporary art, this book focuses on social ecologies and those spaces that are characterized, on the one hand, by a high degree of biodiversity and, on the other, by a long history of the extraction of resources, (neo)colonial relationships, and extractivism.
Contributors discuss the importance of ignored knowledge practices and systems as well as alternative designs of the world that reach beyond simply thinking about progress. Chapters posit that contemporary art and ethnographic objects reflect extractive practices and the potential for regeneration in very different ways. In dialogue with one another, both art and the ethnographic object reveal alternative perspectives of agency, critical historiographies, and possible forms of living together in a new way. Foregrounding emerging environmental aesthetics, the book also critically engages the historical documents and artifacts collected by museums that bear witness today to knowledge gaps and the politics of resource transfer.

For more information, visit the publisher's website!

About the project

This volume emerged from long-term collaborations between the editors and authors within the project Contested Amnesia and Dissonant Narratives in the Global South: Post-Conflict in Literature, Art, and Emergent Archives at the University of Zurich and the University of Kassel, which was generously financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Since 2021, the project has been hosted at the University of Kassel and the documenta Institut in Kassel. An integral part of the research project was the exhibition Extractive Zones at the Museum der Kulturen Basel, along with a related talk series. The realization of the talk series and the book was also supported by the documenta Institut.