FENCES, INSECTS, EMBROIDERIES (material communities)

Who does the labour for this text to be written on a laptop, for data to flow, for our flats to be heated, for our monuments, houses and industries to be built (or destroyed) and for our wealth to grow? The global network of supply chains of materials and energy has to be reshuffled, faced with the continuous atrocities it causes. At the same time zooming in while simultaneously regarding global connections, the exhibition takes a closer look at the complex entanglements of exploitation.

WHO DOES THE WORK?

For some, extractive labour is the only way to survive, especially and paradoxically for those workers, whose environments are being destroyed in the process. Extraction has constructed colonial relationships and sustainable hierarchies. Amid contemporary racisms and sexisms and their toxic narratives, how can ‘we’ consider more-than-human labour?

Without the agencies of water, rocks, bees, trees and birds, nothing remains to be done. Humans carry stones, but stones carry weight. Which stones, whose stones, moved by whom? And in whose lungs do they arrive as a sedimentation of the dust, mingled with saliva? Birds, insects and trees undertake reforestation on dug up and disturbed ground. How will more-than- human communities come together in exploited territories?

WHO BELONGS TO THE COMMUNITY?

Following the material, following the followers of the material and staying with their troubles for a while can lead to surprising naturecultures of (unpaid) care, love and the enormous work of radical endurance amidst exploited areas. Embroideries document the lost homes, and their shared production allows for a coming together and an exchanging of stories of sorrow and joy. Paintings preserve the carefully chosen colours of houses before they are dismantled to make way for further extraction. Testaments of radical endurance and pleasure can emerge in unexpected places, together with the precarious labour of healing.

Relating to destroyed and damaged worlds, this exhibition looks at how material is exploited, moved, crushed, chopped and utilized – to extract yet further material. It opens a space for thinking and sharing ways of responding to the complex ecologies of the more-than- human communities of lithic labour which constantly reorganize in environments stripped for the benefits of those living far away, namely here.

The exhibition corresponds to the research project ‘Two Ore Mountains: Feminist Ecologies of Spatial Practices,’ Karin Reisinger, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.