Molly Gambardella
September, 2021
Annotation: Beyond the World’s End
Chapter two, Blackout: The Necropolitics of Extraction
In chapter two, Demos continues an analysis of arists [maybe state what connects them—as you do in the second sentence? Combine sentences?] Angela Melitopoulos, Allora & Calzadilla, and Ursula Biemann. They are all related in that they are rooted in migration, climate refugees, and looking at what lies behind migration in the first place, or as Demos states, “entanglements of intersectionality”.
“The artworks of Melitopoulos, Biemann, and Allora & Calzadilla do just that, covering a spectrum of cultural manifestations referencing and intervening in diverse sites in the Global North and Global South. Their practices include political documentary, speculative analysis linked to insurrectionary social movements, and gallery-bound sculptural and audiovisual experiments, which all give form to sociopolitical and environmental violence, as well as to inspiring sites of resistance.” 1
Angela Melitopoulos created a four channel video installation running for 109 minutes, commissioned by and shown at documenta 14, entitled, Crossings (2017). Melitopoulos dissects ongoing issues in Greece related to: finances, extraction, violence and dispossession and how those relate to locals, environmentalists and more than human inhabitants.
Ursula Biemann’s short video Deep Weather (2013) begins by depicting the topography of Canada’s Alberta Tar Sand, one of the greatest sources of climate disruption on the planet and another conflict zone. Lots of connections here for obvious reasons with Pipeline 3 right now.
Other works by Ursula Biemann include, “Forest Law (2014), co-created with Paulo Tavares, examines petro capitalist drilling in the Ecuadorian Amazon along with Indigenous resistance that adopts a rights-of-nature defense. As well as, Egyptian Chemistry (2012), which investigates water politics along the Nile and explores how water engineering relates to local agro ecologies, the hydropower of farmer collectives, and revolutionary politics.
Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s recent works such as Blackout, creates an audiovisual and sculptural relic that draws together politics and ecology, highlighting the past and ongoing extractive violence in Puerto Rico. They include performative actions as part of their static piece.
All three of these methodologies build and support what I am working and thinking about. I read Rebecca Solnit's, A Paradise Built in Hell, recently which resonates with a lot of these ideas in this chapter.
Notes
1. Demos, T. J. (2020). Beyond the World’s End: Arts of Living at the Crossing. Durham; London Duke University Press, page 50.
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