What the Mine Gives, the Mine Takes: Critical-Creative Praxis and Mineral Extractivism in Venezuela

Part of UCL Anthropocene's Writers of the Anthropocene series, in partnership with the Institute of Advanced Studies.

Hybrid - In Person and Online (Zoom)

Berlin-based Venezuelan artist and editor Ana Alenso will talk with Gianfranco Selgas about her artistic and research praxis, mineral and oil extractivism in Venezuela, and her latest book, What The Mine Gives, The Mine Takes (Bom Dia Books, 2023). The volume is an invitation to decipher the hidden predatory logic within the mechanisms of gold mining exploitation and the resulting socioecological devastation in Venezuela’s Guayana and Amazon regions. Through art projects, poems, essays, diagrams, satellite visions, and documentary images contributed by different authors, artists, and environmental organizations, the book presents a collective and sensitive cartography of extractivism in southern Venezuela. The conversation will bring to the fore the intersections between art, research, and alternative epistemologies, as well as Venezuela’s role in ongoing planetary debates on extractivism and the climate emergency.

Ana Alenso creates sculptures and installations using materials from the mining and oil industries. Her poetic yet darkly dystopian works explore the intricate web of conflicts and paradoxes, delving into notions of progress and destruction embedded in the oil-based development of the last century. Her artistic practice is often accompanied by field explorations and multidisciplinary collaborations in contexts of natural resource exploitation, activism, recycling, and site-specific artistic practices. Her work has received the Berlin Art Prize, and has been funded by the Stiftung Kunstfonds, DAAD, and Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa.

Gianfranco Selgas is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at SELCS-CMII, University College London. He researches and teaches the cultural, media, and political ecology of nature extraction and energy consumption across Latin America and the Caribbean. He is currently preparing a book on Venezuela’s cultures of extraction and regional environments in the twentieth century.

Image credits: Main - ©Christian Vinck. Courtesy of the artist and BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE; below - © Ana Alenso. Courtesy of the artist and BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE