Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA): Revolutionary Metallurgy I & II

Artist Deborah Tchoudjinoff (University of the Arts London) and Professor Rebecca Empson (UCL Anthropology) will address the social and environmental legacies of mining in Mongolia, followed by Professor Victoria Donovan (University of St. Andrews) and Professor Linda Kaljundi (University of Tallinn) on extractivism in eastern Ukraine and eastern Estonia.

Revolutionary Metallurgy I

Deborah Tchoudjinoff will present 'Baigala I: A convergence of art and technology through sculpture, virtual reality realities in reflecting on extractivism'. This presentation will share the thinking and process behind the artwork produced for Five Heads (Tavan Tolgoi): Art, Anthropology, and Mongol Futurism in 2018, a group exhibition featuring 5 anthropologists specialising in Mongolia, and 5 artists responding to the research. Working closely with Dr. Lauren Bonilla, Baigala I developed through following her extensive research on extractive atmospheres into western Mongolia. The sculptures were made to reference horse saddles as a poignant reminder of what is at stake. The virtual reality component bring viewers into significant terrains and landscapes of western Mongolia. Merging physical artistry with a digital experience, Baigala I asks that a deeper understanding of the delicate balance between change and resilience is needed.

Rebecca Empson will present 'Extracting Minerals and Ambiguous Borders: profit-making strategies in Mongolia'. When coal is mined in Mongolia by state-owned companies and sold to China for a profit, it is often viewed as good for the Nation and something everyone can benefit from. People were given shares in the company as a portion of anticipated gains, but over the years scandals have surrounded this extractive industry. In one case the border between Mongolia and China was deliberately made opaque to allow for coal to be sold at two different prices, generating a share for those who ran the company. In this and many other instances, resource to cash schemes abound as a way for politicians to appease the electorate and do business with each other.

Revolutionary Metallurgy II

Victoria Donovan will present 'The Making and Unmaking of Black Myth of Donbas'. In the first part of this talk she will engage Asia Bazdyrieva’s idea of the “resourcification of Ukraine” to examine how the Ukrainian East, also known as Donbas, was reduced in the colonial visual imaginary – through maps, corporate advertising, and industrial photography – to a space of extraction and economic exploitation. In the second part, she will examine how creative and curatorial practice from the region in the post-2014 period has challenged these visual politics. Drawing on decolonial thinking, she asks how those with situated knowledge of the region's multiple realities have broken with resourcifying epistemic practices, “thinking and doing differently.”

Linda Kaljundi will present 'Estonian Donbass, Ruhr, and whatnot – oil shale and transnational imageries of petroculture'. The expansion of the Estonian oil shale industry and mining is closely linked to the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. During the 1930s, the oil shale industry was booming largely thanks to the commissions coming from Nazi Germany. In the 1940s, the Soviets invested heavily in Estonian oil shale in order to produce gas for war-torn Leningrad. Although often represented as Estonian own super technology, the economically vulnerable oil shale industry is heavily dependent on global flows and the availability of fossil fuels. Cultural imaginaries of the oil shale industry and the infrastructures around it have been equally transnational. Influenced by the Western European, North American, and Soviet visions of industry and extractivism, they reveal well the intense cultural transfers shaping the face of global industrial modernity. This talk will primarily focus on visual representations of the oil shale from the Soviet period and their wider context in the Soviet visual culture, but it also touches upon the impact of transnational and interwar period imaginaries.

About Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA)

Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) sets out to radically transform current critical debates around the Anthropocene, addressing the major lacuna in existing accounts by establishing the Socialist Anthropocene as a conceptual framework that asserts the constitutive role of the environmental histories and potentialities of Socialism in the formation of the new geological age. The project is led by Dr. Maja Fowkes (UCL Institute of Advanced Studies) and funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee.

Image: Installation view of Priidu Aavik, Alo Hoidre, Lepo Mikko. The Rise of Industry in the Estonian SSR. 1950s. Courtesy: Kumu Art Museum.