Conversation
with the Earth under
extractivism
Duration: 4:21 minutes
Locations: Utsjoki, Viankiaappa, Outokumpu, and Sodankylä; Finland
Edited as a two-channel video, the movie invites to investigate dualities between creation, destruction, and beauty, which are inherently embedded in mining operations. Contemporary large-scale mining is widely perceived as a destructive force within socio-natural landscapes, disrupting indigenous and local cultures and livable ecosystems due to the high production of environmental damage and toxicity. At the same time, mining is perceived as a global creative force through the production of commodities and infrastructures.
Similarly, within Western thought, environmental concern and struggles for justice are often centered on ideas and aesthetics of beauty, typically associated with pristine and untouched nature. Yet mining operations can also be perceived as beautiful—or at least impressive or even inspiring by some—because of the grand scale of their machinery and their exploration of the subterranean layers of the Earth. The movie invites to think critically of these binaries and fixed categories and to contemplate on the ethics and aesthetics of environmental justice beyond the modernist notions of beauty and creation.