Extraction

  • As artists and researchers, we are constantly exploring the connections between art, the environment, and labour rights. Interviews from our ongoing Extraction project were broadcast as part of Mad Kate’s S.W.E.A.T. podcast.

    In March 2023 we had the opportunity to interview Donato Laborante, who we met during our tour of the Murgia region of Italy in 2015. As well as being a curator, Donato is a poet, actor, performer and storyteller who galvanizes the artistic scene to create happenings and to move people to take political action in their everyday actions. During one of our visits, we made a journey into a marble quarry in Apricena, and were joined by several local artists who spontaneously began playing percussive sounds on the wall of the quarry. It was this moment that sparked our interest in the idea of extraction as metasignfier–including the extraction of (creative) labour from (precarious) bodies; minerals, gas and water from the ground; sounds, words and images from sentient beings; the consensual extraction of digital content, and the “mining of the exotic” from our very identities. Our third visit to the area allowed us to deepen our understanding of the relationship between stone, sound, and time.

    February 2023 featured an interview with Professor Imre Szeman, the inaugural Director of the Institute for Environment, Conservation, and Sustainability and Professor of Human Geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough. During the interview, he shared his insights on defining extractivism, the role of the artist in using the term, the use and limitation of regarding everything as animate, and greenwashing. From 2021-2022, he was the Climate Critic for the Green Party of Canada. He is co-founder of the Petrocultures Research Group, which explores the socio-cultural dimensions of energy use and its implications for energy transition and climate change, and the leader of After Oil, a collective which has produced After Oil (West Virginia University Press, 2016) and Solarities: Seeking Energy Justice (University of Minnesota Press, 2022). He is the author of On Petrocultures: Globalization, Culture, and Energy (WVUP, 2019) and is working on The Future of the Sun, a book detailing corporate and state control of the transition to renewables.

    May 2023 featured an interview with Professor Thomas F. DeFrantz in conversation with HYENAZ in the context of our project on art and cultures of extraction. Together we talk about time, Black aesthetics, NOWness and the processes of building creative encounters. Thomas F. DeFrantz teaches at Northwestern University and directs SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology; the group explores emerging technology in live performance applications. He believes in our shared capacity to do better and engage creative spirit for a collective good that is anti-racist, proto-feminist, and queer affirming.

    S.W.E.A.T. airs on Colaboradio Free Radios Berlin Brandenburg – 88.4fm in Berlin, 90.7fm in Potsdam, and streaming at FR-BB.org. Afterwards its available for streaming from your podcast app.

  • a workshop with HYENAZ exploring animacy, consent, deep listening and authentic movement, in relationship with stone.

    STILLICIDIUM die tranen des steines I parte:
    SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 2023 AT 3 PM – 6 PM – Poggiorsini, Italy
    https://www.facebook.com/events/3394857770785426
    STILLICIDIUM die tranen des steines II parte
    TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2023 AT 12 PM – 6 PM
    La Mefite di Rocca san Felice, Italy
    https://www.facebook.com/events/147693294856674

    Documentation by Vittoria Elena Simone

    https://milleniumbrigante.it/

    photo HYENAZ
    photo HYENAZ
    photo Vittoria Elena Simone
    photo HYENAZ
    photo Vittoria Elena Simone
  • As winter waned in 2023 we embarked on a journey back to the Murgia region eager to deepen our exploration of stone as a conduit for sound and aliveness. This place is special to us, not only because of its arid hills and valleys, lined with tall and rattly Ferula Ferita shrubs, but also for the warm and enigmatic people who call it home.

    One person in particular draws us back time and time again: Donato Laborante. A curator, poet, actor, performer, and storyteller, Donato invigorates the artistic community, inspiring them to create events and engage in political action through everyday gestures. Our fascination with the theme of extraction began on an excursion to a marble quarry in the town of Apricena on Christmas Day in 2016, where a group of artists, locals and children joined us to craft a spontaneous musical performance striking stones and other detritus against the quarry wall.

    Our work in the region felt incomplete; the surface barely scratched. What follows are daily notes and reflections from our journey.

    This work is possible thanks to support from Musikfonds STIP-III programming, giving us the gift of time to research, revisit, compile, and compose audio visual works from field recordings and videos we have made over years of slow-movement journeys across Europe, to understand that fundamental human impulse: to move.

  • OUR APPROACH

    READING AND DISCUSSING TOGETHER. This reading group is especially oriented towards reading together rather than reading outside the group. We hope that this close reading strategy can be a small act of resistance against the cultural colonization of Western academia, the hegemony of English, and the codified distinctions between the academic and the “non-academic” or the artist. There is no commitment to join for more than one session. Non academics who want to involve critical theory in their work but normally don’t have access to text based resources or the time to do research are encouraged to take part. We also make space for defining and translating words for non-native speakers who don’t have access to translations into their home language(s).

    Sessions have taken place at Kampnagel in Hamburg, Hopscotch Reading Room in Berlin, Casa Tranzit in Cluj, Atelierele Malmaison in Bucharest, Synth Library in Prague and the Kombinatas Left Festival in Lithuania.

    WHAT WE EXPLORE

    ART AND EXTRACTIVISM investigates how extractive processes (environmental, intellectual, and physical) are replicated within the performing and in particular the sonic arts. The concept of extractivism situates all kinds of “innocent practices” as carrying the potential for exploitation and harm. We use extractivism in order to problematise a number of related phenomena—from the environmental extracation of minerals, gas and water from the ground, we expand to include the extraction of (creative) labour from (precarious) bodies, the recording of sounds, words, ideas and images from sentient beings, as well as the “mining of the exotic” in terms of content branding and other new economies from our very selves.

    ART AND EXTRACTIVISM explores the following questions: What are the problematics of extraction which appear within (always-already) hierarchical collaborations? How can processes compromised by extractive dynamics resist extraction? How can we name them, rather than erase them? What are the limitations of the extractivist framework? Are there other ways of finding reciprocal relations between artists, subjects, and nature?

    ART AND EXTRACTIVISM itself should resist extractivist practices by reaching towards collective practice, whereby each member chooses one text (one chapter or short text selection) that they feel could shed light on the topic. We will read the text together, rather than outside of the group, and discuss the text within the meeting time. Since it is assumed that members of the group are not supported financially to spend time researching, or in general supported by arts or academic institutions, the group aims towards generating conversation and thought that can be useful towards our work and not become extractive labour. 

    To that end, ART AND EXTRACTIVISM is also geared towards non-academics who wish to involve critical theory in their work. The idea of the group is to provide a safe space to discuss critical theory outside of established spheres of audibility (i.e., the academic classroom) and to create an environment where those who generally think of themselves as non-academics can interact with critical theory without the pressure of competing or keeping up with others’ knowledges. We will work towards establishing dialogue amongst artists and workers who would like to engage with some of the body of academic work which has been done “about” the worker or the artist, and see how we can relate it to our everyday and real world experiences. In this sense we attempt to resist the extractivist practice that theory engages on the body of the worker or artist.

    RESOURCES

    SOME OF THE BOOKS that we are reading include:

    • Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction Under Late Capitalism – Martin Arboleda
    • The Burnout Society – Byung-Chul Han
    • Freedom, Justice and Decolonization – Lewis R. Gordon
    • Sylvia Winter: On Being Human as Praxis – Katherine McKittrick, Editor
    • Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering and Queer Affect – Mel Y. Chen
    • The Promise of Happiness – Sarah Ahmed
    • Hunting&Collecting – Sammy Baloji
    • On the Post Colony – Achille Mbembe
    • Necropolitics – Achille Mbembe
    • A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None – Kathryn Yusoff
    • On Inhumanity – David Livingstone Smith
    • Unthinking Mastery: Dehumanism and Decolonial Entanglements – Julietta Singh
    • Imperial Mud – James Boyce
    • Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador – Thea Riofrancos
    • On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis – Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh
    • The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives – Macarena Gómez-Barris
    • Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World – Zakiyyah Iman Jackson
  • Queer Talks: HYENAZ and Nóra Ugron on art, extractivism and continuity from a queer, decolonial and posthuman perspective. The talks were part of the complementary programme of the exhibition “Feel ~ Drift ~ Sing” in Triumf Amiria. Part 1 took place at the end of September 2021 at /SAC @ Atelierele Malmaison, Bucharest, as part of the MATKA project “How Should We Talk About Queer Culture?”. Part 2 was at Casa Tranzit (Tranzit House) in Cluj, as part of the MATKA project “How Should We Talk About Queer Culture?”. Both talks were supported by Goethe-Institut Bucuresti and curated by Mihaela Cirjan.

  • I was made into a data set. That set was created from analysis about me. But “I” am not a data set and “I” as I arrived into the world did not consent to being a data set, in fact one could say my infancy qualified me as “not able to give consent.” My a/liveness was debatable, so my parents took over the acts of consenting to the extent that they were asked. It was said that I was born in January. I was given an identification number. I had no penis; I was recorded as FEMALE. My eye colour was stated to be blue. My race was recorded as caucasian. In the act of living I began to understand that I would have to pay to have roof over my head, that I ought to learn the knowledge that was deemed necessary in order to find work to pay for the roof, that I had to register where the roof would be.

    One would or could say that all this data is extracted from me, but it was also given to me, placed upon me, data given to me in the first place. A data set to which I then consent to be taken from me, to which I must agree or disagree, but one with which I must always contend and relate, even though I did not consent to the field of the relation.

    Almost any exchange can be extractive. Although we might try to undermine extractivism by engaging in better or safer or more ethical practices, first and foremost–obtaining consent—it seems as though the act of accessing consent holds the possibility to obfuscate the extractive power dynamics or the possibilities of extractivist practices inherent in any exchange. Therefore I’m interested in the context of the consent acquisition and developing more nuanced and complicated language around the ecosystem of the consenting figures.

    I believe that the “compendium of tactics” is a positive starting point and something to work within. But I also believe that as hard I might work to practice my work ethically, we will not manage to wipe out the hierarchies that exist through these so-called ethical acts alone. We still may not manage to disrupt the system, we still may not completely be able to understand the terms upon which we gain access to consent. We don’t want to silence those dynamics or forget about them.

    Consider the context of sex between two consenting teenagers who have been shaped by heteronormativity, gendered expectations of role playing, ideas around sexuality, around power, around “who has the audacity to —”. Although we could say that consent exists, what also exists is power, hierarchy, (perhaps) dissatisfaction, perhaps a vague sense of unease. If the unease already exists, are we ever talking about consent in the action itself or are we speaking of a much larger consent?

    Consider a Walmart being built, a mine being dug, a river being diverted, a new expensive coffee shop being built. From whom is consent garnered in the making of those things and the inevitable taking of the realestate, the environment, the old ways of life? Who agrees to this? Suppose I am offered 50€ for a performance, suppose I am offered 500€ for a performance. Suppose I am offered 5000€ for a performance. To which of these fees do I consent? To which of these fees do I not consent?

    Presumably, I would not consent to a 50€ fee for a performance, but in fact, I probably would, living and working in Berlin, a city where 50€ is not unheard of. And I am broke, and there are few jobs. I might say say.

    Presumably, I would consent to a fee of 5000€ for a performance. I would consider spending several months on it, paying myself a “monthly wage” and directing my time towards the preparation of a performance. Considering that I already live on about 1000€ a month, I might think it therefore reasonable to devote 5 months of my life to a performance for which I garner such a fee. But if I were to run this by someone working in business, they might think me a total fool. A 5000€ fee might be the wage they would make in two weeks, in one week. It is not reasonable for me to devote that much time to my performance because there is no reason here. Clearly, the value of my labor does not make sense. The value of my art cannot be simply placed in the measurements of “time spent” and “money made.” I do not consent to the (lack of reason) around the value of my labour, of my creative labour, my emotional labour.

    Even naming a thing—an idea, a place, a mode of communication—colonizes the experience. Naming is, essentially, a colonization. The being is colonized by the name. As the being walks into the world, encounters the world, the being must either say YES I consent to the name, or NO—I dont consent to this name. But either way, they are forced to contend with this name which was not given consensually.

    There is power in naming and giving an event language, and this naming colonized an experience that we had, gave it language. The language of rape was something specific with which I found myself engaging as a young person. I had to engage with this naming—to dispute or agree. Perhaps it was a language that elevated it, perhaps this elevation was a kind of act which I could now understand in the language of unlearning white supremacy as “signaling wokeness,” as “male saviourship,” as “performative allyship.”

    At 20 I understood for the first time not (only) that I WAS RAPED but that I had grown up within a culture of rape, and that acts to which I had consented were procured in a field of consent to which I did not consent. Engaging with the language of rape as the name of an act to which I had participated had advantages for me. Choosing to use the word RAPE was better than covering it up, burying it, letting it be another sexual experience. Choosing to call it rape was choosing life in that moment, was choosing a life journey. It helped me understand all those terrible feelings, it helped me unify with other people who had experienced something similar, it helped me find a place for my experience, it helped me on my path towards seeing myself in all the sexually liberated ways that I would. But using the word RAPE never explained everything.

    Calling it rape didn’t entirely explain my consent, or what I would more accurately like to call, my field of consent, or the field of consent which makes possible the extraction of the consent. And here is where extraction and consent and sex and power and rape continue to intersect for me. Though what I would like to speak about is EXTRACTION and my continued research on the topic of extraction and extractivism and new extractivisms, I find myself thinking about rape. Or maybe rape was there all along, so obvious in the gash in the earth created by the marble quarry. Or is it obvious? And is rape a gash, or rather, is my cunt a gash from which something is extracted? Honestly, I dont think so, this metaphor doesnt exactly work. Its something else, something adjacent, something more elusive.

    Is my cunt a gash in the earth, my “female” body the earth through which I am pierced by some phallic drill? Fuck that. To this Freudian metaphor I do not consent. To this phallocentric, heteronormative idea of sex, I do not consent. To this position of near paralysis as soft earth is plundered by heavy frantic machinery, I do not consent. To likening of the female body to the natural world, to the male penis as the machine, the invader, the artificial intelligence, the foreign–to all these false binaries I do not consent, I do not agree.

    Extraction implies using force, implies as well taking something out of something else, in other words, squeezing something out. Still, I would like to venture that perhaps “extractive event” is useful in understanding this moment, and perhaps many others like it in which consent of some kind, is involved.

    As I walk myself through this thinking, I encounter the question: If this event were extractive, then something was extracted–but what was it? It feels commonplace to say that “sex was taken” from a woman (nonconsensual), or “sold” (consensual, perhaps, insofar as capitalism is). “She sold her sex,” it is said, “her dignity was stolen,” and even “she sold herself,” or more benign: “he took her virginity.” All of these are indeed commonplace but none of these get at (my) experience; inexact at best. At worse–a second violence, a (re)violation and repeat offensive of patriarchy in the mimisis of its form (“The Masters Tools”). None of these things were taken from me. I still have my sex, whatever that is. I still have my sexuality, I still have my power to orgasm, to enjoy sex, I still have my genitalia, and all my organs intact. I still have my self, my gender(s), I still have my power to define my sexuality. It was my consent which was extracted as we existed within this field of consent to which I did not consent. Or to a field which I was forced to relate but desired so much otherwise.

    I desired so, so much otherwise; I desired an ocean of otherwise. There was so much to which I did not consent, so much to which I did not consent, and yet my YES somehow consented, consented to all of it! Consented to all of the things to which I did not consent.

    To begin, I did not consent to being asked to have sex. I did not consent to being a young woman. I did not consent to being a body who was understood as a young woman. To be a body called a woman who was understood as the receptive pocket for some kind of act of insertion. Who was a body who was understood to be asked rather than asking, to consider an offer rather than make an offer, to “protect” her body as land, as property, as soft earth.

    I did not consent to growing up in patriarchy where I was meant to be “guarding” my virginity, my sexuality, my state of “not pregnant”, my state of not “soiled”, not “spoiled”, not “violated”. I did not consent to having to worry about getting pregnant. I did not consent to the learned expectations of a body who was understood as male. I did not consent to the relationship of power between male and female bodies. To the fact of hormones, which made me less horny that day and made his hormones–apparently–rage. I desired to go to school, to stay dressed, to not take off my pantyhose, to not to be asked to do so. I desired not to be asked to consent to something which I clearly did not want. I desired that he would understand this. I desired that he wouldn’t push, that he wouldn’t try to “seduce”, to “convince”, to sway me. I desired that I wouldn’t have to use words to tell him. I desired that I wouldn’t think it would be “easier” to say yes. I desired that he wouldn’t try to extract consent. To get me to say yes.

    And there were other things, too, bigger things that I couldn’t even imagine and therefore couldn’t even want. There were desires that wouldn’t be thought of, desires that our bodies were not opposition, that our sex would be queer, that we would circulate each other, that our bodies could fit differently together, that our genders could allow for some other kind of dialogues, that sex would not be called sex, that we would not be in the condition of the parents home in the suburban house, in the institution of schooling, that our sexual exploration could be so much more powerful and spiritual and exploratory and imaginative and creative than those twenty minutes before high school in Virginia could ever have been.

    There was a whole sphere of relations, of structures and histories to which we had arrived in that moment to which I had no access to overhaul. This is what I might call the field of my consent. That is why when someone ever makes the excuse of why we go to war using the latest indiscretion that just happened it always points to war and never explains all the minor gestures that came before it, the conditions of violence to which there seems no other choice. I did not desire this moment nor the conditions of this moment.

    It is this that might be worth hanging on to in this writing, might be worth extrapolating from–this idea that the conditions in which the consent is extracted are not consented to. And this is worth speaking of, and thinking through, whenever we consent to–or ask others–to consent to our wishes and desires, no matter we do and no matter what field we are in.

    It might be tempting to think that in digital contexts, it is our content and data that is being mined from us, extracted from us. This may be true metaphorically. But simultaneously, and perhaps more importantly, is the existence of our consent, or what we could call the field of our consent. And in this sense we might think that what is extracted from us is our consent to sign up in the first place, to put our data in the fields, and to share our content. And why do we consent? Because we feel that we must, that it is part of our world, and because we get things that we want. And what do we produce for ourselves every time we share our content? We produce content–our own content, our ego boost of the number of likes, our sense of worth, of value. We experience an artistic act, a creative moment, the act of creating a work of art–as much of our content is. Perhaps that we are an activist, that we are doing something. Or that our ideas have value. That we look cute, creative, that we are being real, genuine, keeping it 100%.

    Each time we share, we DO get something. But do we consent to the infrastruture itself? Do we consent to who controls it? To the language that it uses? Do we consent to being asked? Do we consent to the feeling that we must? To the pressure itself? To the feeling that we must make a choice–be in facebook or outside of facebook–you decide? Do we consent to the human slavery that makes possible the chips in our computers, to the devalued labour of the persons making such devices, of the delivery of goods to homes by underpaid delivery persons, to the sedentary nature of an elite group of people’s lives, to the persuasive power of conveniences, to the slow eating away of people’s ability to concentrate, to the way that digital content is overloading minds. Oh yes–we consented. But do we desire otherwise? Oh yes, we desire otherwise, so much otherwise.

    And as artist/worker–yes, I signed the contract that said I would earn 350€ for this day of work. I understood that this is the budget said corporation, said artist, said theatre, said commercial outfit, could offer me. There was no more to offer me, nothing more I could extract from them. I consented to the model release, that my image could be used in advertising, that the show could be shown on TV, in an advertisement, on an airplane. That it would be and could be distributed. I signed a paper and my signature is there, proving my consent. And I–as Artist, as “creator”, as “author”, I procure your consent to work with me, for said budget, which is already “over my budget”, already “a lot for me” and yet very little for you. I procure your consent to work in these conditions of less than optimal conditions, which I try to overcome and to make better.

    But who, in these conditions of artistic engagement, will be named author, whose name will be in big and bold? How will our successes be measured? Who will get funding to work further, who will get amplified to speak about it again? Who is emotionally invested and will be called to speak about the ramifications of where it goes.

    Through my consent, and your consent, we cover up something, many things to which we do not consent, we do not desire. So this consent form — it does not really go far enough, might even cover up something very important, may say nothing of the power dynamic in the first place. And this payment, this payment may make me or someone else believe they, that I, am not a slave, but do I, do you, consent to this payment, repeatedly and again, when rent is as high as it is? Do I consent to the idea of money at all. Do I consent to the act of survival through work? Do I consent to being asked to sign?

    I desire so much otherwise, and I believe that you desire so much otherwise, from me and from the world.

    Kathryn Fischer, a writing in process, August – September 2021
    *compendium of tactics is a useful term coined by Sadie Lune
    *desiring otherwise I first heard used by Joy Mariamma Smith

  • impromptu musical composition in a marble quarry in Apricena, Italy 2015

    Extraction is the forthcoming audio visual and performative work in HYENAZ Foreign Bodies series and explores how extractive processes are replicated within the arts, and how we can find ways to resist and mediate those processes. The initial research phase of this project began in June 2021 through Fonds Darstellende Künste #TakeCare program. The residency phase of this work, with support from Fonds Darstellende Künste #TakeHeart program, continued in the summer of 2022 in partnership with Kampnagel Theatre Hamburg. More information about our work during the residency program can be found here.

    The project began in 2015 with our field work in a rock quarry in Apricena, Italy (pictured above), where we gathered sounds, images and writing. This scar in the earth – both beautiful and disturbing – illuminated our role as artists in a society structured by extractive forms of capitalism. To develop a performative response, we will focus on accountability practices and proactive techniques to resist extractivist practices—especially looking inwards at the way in which gathering sound can be fundamentally extractive.

    The concept of extraction situates all kinds of “innocent practices” as carrying the potential for exploitation and harm. We use extraction as metasignifier—we include the extraction of (creative) labour from (precarious) bodies, minerals, gas and water from the ground, sounds, words and images from sentient beings, as well as the “mining of the exotic” from our very selves. In response we ask: What are the problematics of extraction which appear within (always-already) hierarchical collaborations? How can processes compromised by extractive dynamics resist extraction? How can we name them, rather than erase them? What are the limitations of the extractivist framework? Are there other ways of finding reciprocal relations between artists, subjects, and nature?

    We want to especially thank Donato, Maria-Teresa and the community in and around Apricena, Italy.

  • The following compendium is a by-no-means-exhaustive list of accountability practices during the field recording, filming and collaborative phase of a project. These practices are designed to upset, disrupt, and subvert extractivist or exploitative relationships which may otherwise occur during an artistic “exchange”. They have been compiled as result of research, conversations and experience gathered in the field of sound recording for the past 20 years.

    *a very useful phrase coined by Sadie Lune

    • Introduce yourself, your project, your idea, your goals
    • Talk openly about the hierarchies which may be already present
    • Map the context of the recording (people, place, time, sociopolitical context)
    • Make works which are context specific, and don’t arbitrarily mix contexts
    • Name contributors and spell their names correctly
    • Don’t record undercover
    • You have asked others to share–be likewise ready to share back
    • Send collaborators their media
    • Respect requests about how media is used
    • Speak openly about funding and payment
    • Develop processes of accountability to collaborators after the initial recording time is over
    • Continue to notify collaborators about the journey and life of a project; how and where it is shown
    • Make clear distinctions and have open conversations about whether a person is a collaborator, contributor, or employee.
    • Come to a consensus about how a person would like to be attributed
    • Offer payment or trade for the giving of content (i.e. sound or image)
    • Consider other forms of repayment, collaboration, long term support
    • Develop a clear and consistent strategy and system for remembering and documenting
    • Be mindful of the tools used in the process of the project and the makers of those tools
    • Attribute the people who contributed to the tools that you utilize in your work
    • Research the sources of the tools that are used
    • Research the sources of the props and other materials used in a collaboration
    • Have conversations about what a collaboration consists of and what are the expectations
    • Keep up with relationships over time: accountability and interconnectivity
    • practice “Radical collaborative” and “correlational narratives” (Katherine Mc Kittrick ed.) Sylvia Winter: On Being Human as Praxis
    • Release open source works
    • Treat collaboration as skill sharing, so that others go away enriched with certain skills
    • Treat each person, object and place as “irreplaceable”
    • Aftercare–in what ways can aftercare be performed? (thanks Zey for this contribution!)

  • Why am I thinking about extractivism and what am I hoping to understand through this process?

    Part of what I would like to do is begin from a space of acknowledging that extractivist practices are inherent to most labour and creative processes, including my own, and to look that in its face. As a sound designer using field recordings–I may record the sound of an insect buzzing past me. The whizzing of its wings might become a synthesizer, made possible by a software that I was able to buy through work in capitalist labour, to install on a computer which I was able to purchase. The computer was built by many hands, its parts mined from the earth, a mine built through consent, through coercion, through force, through manipulation, colonization, negotiation? Mined by many hands entangled and intertwined with a global system of trade, automization, sub-contracting. In each site, a wider community of services, domestic labour, sex work, precarious economies generate and co-exist. Relationships of migration, power, choice, consent, entitlement, desire, ability, accessibility—all living and breathing through this highly complex entanglement we have with each other, not even knowing the face(s) of one another.

    The insects do (not) consent. I engage in an act in which I do not even leave the possibility for their consent. If I were to “use” human actors I might consider their consent, their involvement, their collaboration or the employment of their labour. The fact that I have decided who can and cannot offer consent points again to invisibility, facelessness, entanglements that I willingly allow to be invisible.

    The synthesizer becomes the melodic lead in a song. The song gets played on Spotify. Spotify Premium users pay quite a bit per month for a streaming service, and I may get just pennies per month for the streaming of my song. But do I get other things? Do I build a reputation as a musician, as an “Artist”? Will I receive funding from a body who will recognize me as “an Artist”? Will I give whatever funding I receive back to the insect, will there be enough for them to get a share? Is “giving back” the end goal, does “paying” help, and does it disrupt processes of extraction?

    What is extraction? From the Cambridge Dictionary online, extraction is the process of taking out or removing something, especially by force. Extractivism, a term initially developed by Latin American scholars, situates these extractive processes in the global economy, whereby these processes of extraction interact with global capitalist economies and trade. Although the idea has been used by many scholars in thinking about environmental extractivism, its also been used in relation to other contexts such as the extraction of human surplus labour, and also expanded into territories as “new extractivism(s)” to speak about digital content, intellectual property and new or more abstract economies of emotional labour and care.

    What is the “force” of extraction implemented when it comes to creative economies? Are we aware of the force, do we feel coerced? Perhaps the force has something to do with the precarious conditions in which many of us find ourselves, and the coercive nature of so-called artistic collaboration is already built into the relationships of power in the first place. If I agree to a 300 euro fee, am I agreeing to my surplus labour being extracted, or am I simply agreeing to this fee because I know the choice is between 300 euros or no work? Likewise if I offer someone a 300 euro fee, am I making them consider a similar offer. Does 300 pay for the rights to use my ideas, to use another’s ideas, and does it even make “sense” to think through the frame of quantification?

    As an artist I am interested in contextualizing my work <for> others, <collaborating with> others and <employing> others inside the mess of ways in which we are and become entangled with each other through relations of extraction. Id also like to begin by saying, this writing is not the first of its kind nor the last; it follows and flows with many other thinkers who are doing the same. Moreover, whether or not we are actively articulating these relationships through the written word (which takes time and privileges the funded academic or funded artist), I believe that there are many processes in which artists are engaging with acts of upsetting, resisting, and disrupting extractive relationships, even as they exist in the art world.

    I don’t intend this to be a heavily intellectual and inaccessible work. In fact I might rather say, this is just a blog post, and its just a place to think through some initial ideas. It also might be incredibly obvious that I am writing and thinking outside of an academic setting, I don’t feel that I have full access to the correct language of academia, therefore, the language of audibility in that setting. I may try to acquire it, to copy it, to learn from it, but still I feel that my tongue is missing a beat. That’s a way of saying, I’m going to have to write simply because I wont be able to fake it.

    Why talk about extraction? Maybe I want to talk about extraction because I want to think of the ways in which we sometimes feel “exploited” or that something was “taken from us” and yet its difficult to put our fingers on the ways in which we feel this, why we may feel this way, and how to understand or resist the process through which this happened. When it comes to ideas–perhaps this feels especially murky, since so many ideas are flying at us all the time, it is genuinely difficult to follow who had an idea first. Sometimes, though diligent attribution might seem like the best course of action, we still have to ask ourselves–was it “correct” that such-and-such idea was attributed to a particular person? Did naming that person solidify his or her as unique artist? Is it more fair to simply attribute the “hive mind”? Especially when it comes to ideas, our current are (all) involved in process to which we consent in the immediate sense–for example, we agree to the terms of the labour–but if we were asked if we consent to the structure itself, we might not. And perhaps there I can start just to name some of the dynamics of extraction that I believe I intersect.

    In what ways am I entangled?

    25 July 2021

    Kathryn Fischer aka Mad Kate

  • HYENAZ recently discussed the current state of their research into extraction and extractivism on the “This Beautiful Shot is not an Accident” podcast with Laura J. Lukitsch. You can listen to the podcast here or read the transcript that follows:

    Laura So this is the end of week four of my residency, and I’m here with Kate and Adrienne in the forest again, and we’re going to talk about the week they had here at the residency as we all prepared to head back to Berlin. So, um, before I begin, if you could share who you are and what you do.

    Kate I’m Kate and I am a electronic producer and a performance artist, and I am one half of Hyenaz.

    Adrienne Hello, I’m Adrienne. I’m the other half of Hyenaz and yeah, we’re doing movement performance and a lot of work with the sounds, field recordings that are specific to certain conceptual contexts that we’re working in. This tends to be the basis of the kind of works that we do.

    Laura Yeah, thank you. And when you came, you were talking about specifically what you wanted to work on when you were here, which was researching the extractive nature of art as it related to your field recordings. And I’m curious what you did in terms of your research and what you found and if you found that you have to do things differently in the future with your field recordings or if you are feeling like you’re not crossing that barrier and being extractivist and maybe before talking about your research, you can define what activism and art is.

    Kate Well, so extraction is taking something generally out of the ground or taking something normally by force out of something else. And extractivism has been used to describe how these process have been globalised and how it influences global systems of labour. There’s also labour extraction, which was a term used already by Marx to extract surplus labour. But generally it’s been used especially by Latin American scholars, to think about the way in which extractivism of natural resources from the ground have then been exported and how that works into the whole global system of trade and then exploitation in many different ways of the earth and also of labour.

    But now there has been an increasing body of work around extractivism and other kinds of economies. So digital content, of course, is one way in which, you know, we are sharing and giving up our content to be, or our data, you know, willingly giving up our data or semi willingly to big corporations who are then extracting that for use. There’s also ways of looking at kind of emotional extraction, intellectual extraction of ideas. And so we’re kind of we’re extrapolating from that or expanding from that to think about how those processes operate within arts.

    So that could mean and again, I feel like we’re in some ways we’re inventing our own ideas around this or extrapolating from ideas around this to see how it resonates with us inside the arts, because we do a lot of taking of sounds or taking of images. I mean, we use the word taking, which is really interesting because, you know, as we or I say, I would say one uses that word often or it’s a common word to say can we take a recording or do a recording or take an image? Is that an extractive practise is kind of the question. And so that’s what. Yeah, that’s what we’re we’re looking at. I think I got away from your first question or you had a large question in the beginning, then I got away from the next part that you were asking.

    Laura Well, sorry. Yes, I’m the other question was, the first one was defining it. And thank you. And actually, it’s interesting because you talk about taking can I take your interview or some audio and then in filming, it’s even more problematic in a way, that word shot. Can I you know, I’m going to go out and shoot. And actually that term is in the name of this podcast, which I’ve thought about, like, do I remove that because it can be problematic.

    But the second question was then what were you reading in terms of, you know, what was, what did your research involve? And then have you come to any determination about your own processes as it relates to extraction and extractivism? Because the flip side of that is like a lot of work that artists do is they also, bring forth information that may not be brought forth in other ways, and I don’t want to use the word give voice, because that’s also a problematic, because that’s kind of a place of privilege. So there’s also this idea of privilege, who’s privileged and who’s not?

    Kate Yeah, I think that’s getting at what Adrienne and I were discussing yesterday, which is that the artist has always had a very interesting position in any sort of labour and in capitalist system because, of course, many artists are, you know, working and selling their artwork in some form or another to survive. So they’re part of a capitalist system. And yet there’s also this other drive that I’d say is sort of anticapitalist in the sense that they are working out of a sense of urgency. Maybe it’s part of just I need to wake up and write. It’s part of my mental health or my I want to live outside of the normal or I hate these normal, but I want to live outside of general frames of work, you know, from eight to five every day. I need a different kind of lifestyle, different kind of relationship to the world and in which I am.

    So it places the artists in this, I think, in many different kind of positions, you know. In one sense the artist, and it goes back to a really old kind of division between artists so that there was this this idea of the artist as a sort of unique genius who is somehow funded either by the you know, by the court or by these funding bodies and kind of lives beyond the system and is producing art almost like aside from all of the capitalist system. And then there’s this handywork or artisan who’s creating, making making objects like maybe making a stool. And it also has a lot of artistry, but it’s much more connected to labour and to the idea of making and being part of the capitalist system.

    And I think this distinction has always been sort of classist, definitely classist, and has involved distinctions between artist and and therefore has extractivism sort of built into it, because we see this with, you know, big artists who kind of have their name on something and then have a whole brand of people working for them. So the actual handymakers who are making all of the objects that become part of it and the people doing the logistics and, you know, all of this big machinery of the so-called capital-A artist on the top. So I feel that there’s extractive things happening there within and among artists.

    So, yeah, it’s it’s interesting to think about where does the artist locate him or herself inside of these relationships of extraction. And I think what I mean, what I would say is definitely we all are we we are somewhere inside of this network and spectrum. It’s not kind of one way or the other being extractive or not being extractive. And I think essentially, of course, even the idea of taking a field recording, there is something extractivist about it.

    Even when one gets consent, even when one achieves some kind of sense of collaboration, that’s something we’ve been looking at a lot is around this idea of gaining consent, around collaboration and gaining consent to have one’s voice or ideas taken, because there’s still the problematic of authorship. You know, still the artist comes away or the person who’s taken the interview or taken the image or the sound with in some sense, possession or ownership of that forever after. So even if they’re paid in that one time to do the interview or whatever it is, it’s hard to achieve kind of equality, so-called, especially in a capitalist system, because then who gets you know, when the work gets shown, whose names are on there, whose names are in bold, whose names are on the top, et cetera, et cetera. And on the other hand, I think that people who consent to give their sounds, their ideas, their words, it’s not that they’re being it’s not a straight, you know, black and white thing where they’re being exploited to be giving up or giving up these ideas or sharing these ideas.

    But there is a kind of, in that moment, there is a kind of consent to the system that is already unequal. You know, there’s already these hierarchies built into it. So we’ve been thinking about ways that we can sort of subvert that. What can we do? How can we kind of continue on relationships when we make interviews about different kinds of very practical things around? OK, we share the interview material with them right away. We offer payment for interviews. We tell them when it’s going to be published again. We do a lot of work around where it’s going to travel and we do a lot of work around mapping the context of doing sound recordings in the beginning. So it’s like thinking about what is the context of making the recording, who are the people involved, what is the environmental context of the recording? Doing all of that work I think helps at least to situate ourselves and does some kind of pushing back to these forces. But they can’t be entirely undone, you know, so. So, yeah, it’s always still questions. But I’ll let Adrienne talk now because I’ve been taking up a lot of space. I’m sure you have a lot of things to add to the research.

    Laura Yeah, I know, Adrienne, you were really intensely reading some research that had philosophical underpinnings, I guess, around existentialism. What did you take away from that process and how does that fit into your current thoughts?

    Adrienne For me, I became very interested in the difference between extracting material versus extracting immaterial things. I think that it’s very clear the examples of extraction when we’re talking about removing minerals from the ground, people can say that there is a hole left behind and a landscape that’s transformed. And so there’s a very clear connection between an action that was taken and the consequence for human beings or for non-human entities, environments, systems and different kinds of homeostases are broken and can perhaps never be repaired.

    There’s something very different when we’re talking about taking something which is immaterial, extracting something which is immaterial. So when we’re talking about, for instance, a human being feeling extracted from, what are the signs that that’s taking place, that they feel tired, that they feel depressed and that they feel angry and resentful against the person that is extracting from them, whether that be a boss or a fellow artist that they’re working with or for, it’s not quite as clear a manifestation of that. And as human beings are quite complex systems then the kinds of things which can lead us into say depression are many and overlap so it’s never clear exactly why one is feeling depressed and it could be because of childhood conditions, or could be because an artist you’re working with who is taking your labour and putting their name on it. it’s not clear then where it lies. So it’s hard to measure. It’s hard to weigh that damage that’s done by immaterial extraction.

    And also, like there’s a big difference between, for example, taking marble out of a quarry out of the ground and leaving the space transformed, then compared to going in there and recording the sounds of stones of the space and both things involved taking. But one form of taking doesn’t necessarily leave the landscape changed in any way. Then you ask yourself, does it matter then that I came here and took what I needed to take? Does it have any kind of… Is it extractive if we can’t say that anything has changed? And I’m not sure about how to answer that clearly. I think that it might be that the space can’t really articulate any kind of grievance to the artist.

    But the artist can sense sometimes that, like the taking action is actually doing harm to themselves as an artist and their well-being, because by always removing or always taking sounds and then we’re making these new kind of copies of the sounds that we are thingifying them and we are commodifying these things. And so when we when we interact with objects, when we interact with sounds, we interact with images as commodities, then we’re transforming their nature and we’re implying that they are all replaceable. That one sound is just as good as another. One person is just as good as another, that they only have a kind of exchange value because ultimately we’re trying to to sell something and exchange this artistic creation for money or for cultural capital or whatever it is we gain from doing it. And I think that that’s a kind of disenchanting process that that I find personally depressing. I never feel quite at home with those kinds of processes.

    And yeah, I would say also that like for example, for thinking about extraction immaterial and the material that somehow eventually those two things overlap. So if you take the example of the way that Silicon Valley is extracting data from individuals who are their customers or clients, then, it’s an immaterial thing which is being extracted. But we’re seeing that like this material, this data has no value in and of itself in immaterial form. It’s used to shape behaviour and in particular, our consumptive behaviour. So by extracting data. They’re also encouraging us to purchase more things, which is encouraging physical manifestations of extraction, of destruction of landscapes, of pollution of the entire environment with chemicals, petrochemicals and all the different things that are that are in our bodies right now. So eventually, like the immaterial extraction leads to a material extraction, the two things kind of blur into each other.

    And that’s what’s been kind of interesting, that’s what’s been a revelation from me through my reading. The reading I’ve been doing is, just briefly, from Lewis Gordon, who is, I think, defines himself as… well he’s interested in investigating Africana existentialism. So looking at existentialism, particularly from the perspective of being a black person and the way that knowledge systems affect black communities, as I understand it, and the way also that black communities, by being structured as an other or even excluded from ethical relationships entirely, how they actually then are at a unique position to critique and to take philosophy beyond it’s kind of stagnated state that it’s in now – what the white European euromodernist philosophical tradition finds itself in right now. So that’s the reading. And so it’s just it’s been good to read somebody who’s both very political and also very radical in the sense of going back to the basics, going back to the phenomena, the experience of a human being, what it means to have an object, what it means to interact with another subject. And thinking about it in those terms, I like that, that’s brought me back to see things differently than the kind of pre-assumed concepts I might have brought to a project originally.

    Kate I can just add something to that, because I really liked what you said about how the immaterial comes back to the material and then, of course, also the immaterial is gathered through the extraction of the material. So to, you know, make the computers in the first place. And this brings me to something I’m reading now where it really shows how even 10, 15 years ago, a lot of paradigms were around sort of north, south, west, non-west, very nation state based ideas of extractive processes or new imperialist processes. And all of the same things are still happening, like rape, murder, labour extraction near slavery, modern day slavery. All of these things are still happening and of course, environmental plunderage. But the messiness is really increasing.

    So he’s really making, the author now, who ironically and embarrassingly, I can’t remember the name of the author right now. No, no. It’s a new, it’s a book I just started, actually, who’s really locating extractivism in Latin America. And but he talks about the messiness now that it’s not really just nation state or corporation, that it’s all very much mixed up and it’s very hard to tell because of subcontractor’s and because of all of these different kinds of global involvements where to really place blame as far as who is doing the extraction and why I feel like this is sort of paralleled as well in the art world, which is that it’s really difficult when we think about the amount of content that we’re generating, the amount of sounds and ideas that are around us to really think, oh, who had that idea first? I mean, is that important, first of all? But, you know, to to sort of sort out authenticity, to sort out where something, quote unquote comes from and who does the taking and who is taken from, but rather, how this is really a much more messy… authorship is much messier and the network is much more complicated. And so that way I also see a lot of parallels between how extractivism is taking place.

    Adrienne Yeah, I agree. And I think that it’s kind of become a massive infernal machine in which there’s so many different processes that are all kind of becoming linked to each other. Climate systems, data, information systems, production systems. They’re all being drawn into each other and affecting each other. And I think about how, for instance, that I read that IQs is in human society, are gradually decreasing. And this is obviously a problematic measure. But it is observable that over the decades, the sum of humanity is losing three IQ points in each decade. Its quite a disturbing thought to me that we’re losing some of our intelligence, which makes us more susceptible to manipulation through information systems, which makes us more likely to buy things which are polluting the environment, which are then necessarily then polluting our neurological makeup. And that it’s a kind of like it’s a loop and that we’re heading around, which is leading us towards that destruction of ourselves and the destruction of our planet.

    Laura So I would like to ground this into your own work and how you think about what you’re doing, because I think it seems to me that you mentioned that looking into this as a subject is new to you. So before this, you I’m imagining when you’re creating, you’re probably thinking about how can I generate something that is generous to the world and to do that, unless you’re just going to use your own recordings of your own body, you are using recordings from the outside world and the topics that you touch on, which is about bodies and about gender and race and sexuality, having multiple voices, having other inputs, I’m sure helps you create a more rich, final product, which you’re not necessarily selling. So how do you think about those field recordings and how do you make the decisions and what to record and how to include those into your work, which is involving kind of remixing of… and re… I don’t know what the sound term is, but you change the sounds in some way.

    Adrienne Yeah, Kate, began this document called Compendium of Tactics. So we’re trying to document this process. And if you want to talk a bit about that in a second. I mean, the first one I think about I don’t really know exactly…. I don’t have all the answers clear yet, and I don’t know that I ever will. But I think that the first very important step is just to problematise those practises that you’re doing in order to transform them. I wouldn’t want to ever retreat from interacting with the world and with others to kind of purify myself of any kind of potentially ethical quandaries or dangers or whatever, but I do like the idea of always problematising these relationships and foregrounding these relationships in the first place, rather than just assuming that, like at the end of the day, the show must go on and that what I produce as an artist is more important than the relationships that constitute the creation of the artwork.

    Kate Yeah, I would say it’s new, not new in the sense that it’s new that we’re using the framework of the idea of extraction, which we decided to do because in this series we’re working on called Foreign Bodies, each song we try to kind of dig deep into one concept. And this concept we decided to concentrate on extraction and extractivism because we did the field recordings in a marble quarry in Italy for this particular track. But I would say the ideas around extraction, appropriation and usage of other people’s materials has actually been really instrumental or formed the basis of my work for a really long time, because I came from writing when I moved to Berlin in 2004, I started doing performance art and initially I just had my writing in my body. And I was using this as the basis of some pieces.

    It’s interesting, because as my art became more entangled in my work, meaning I needed to earn money from my art, I think I needed to produce more content. And I started working with… I started using more and more other people’s songs, for example, like I was doing burlesque and stripping. And I would, you know, dance to somebody else’s song, which is perfectly fine. But when you think about creating an artistic work, it becomes problematic to sort of try to mould somebody else’s creative work into your own dance. You know, just as an idea. It’s really interesting because that whole creative work of the song has a whole life of its own. And I don’t think I necessarily saw this as problematic. And at the same time, I didn’t see it as sort of where I wanted to go artistically. And so this as I became more and more conscious of that, I also realised that I wanted to kind of keep going back to my own body, my own words, my own songs, and then actually put me into the direction of sound design and production and learning how to create my own music and to to kind of resist the forces of using, you know, anything other than what I myself could produce. And that also includes what’s on my physical body. So I am a lot of times performing naked because, I mean, not only do I deal with sexuality and how the body is read, I’m also really interested in what we carry on our body and all the symbols that clothing then carries with it.

    And that goes back to this idea of the artisan who’s kind of the actual hands that are creating all the things that are on our bodies. And then, of course, the symbolism, the appropriation, the sort of cultural content that’s contained in all those things worn on our bodies. So a lot of my work has been, I would say, in resistance or in dialogue with this idea of, you know, how do we speak authentically from ourselves, how do we produce a truly authentic kind of work? And yet I think in all of that, I would have to say you never can produce authentically. You’re always, you know, even a song has been influenced, has there’s this, you know, huge subconscious that we’re kind of dealing with, that we’re in relationship with, you know, that we’re enmeshed in. You know.

    That said, I think, yeah, there are these tactics. We use the term compendium of tactics, which was actually coined by my co parents Sadie Lune, which is just things that you can do, for example, like the mapping of the context of the sounds, making sure really doing all the labour of tagging people, remembering, writing down their names, correct. Spelling, bringing them through the journey of where all of the work is going to travel, making sure to share any kind of income that comes out of it, trying to share income initially just continuing to make it known that the process is ongoing and that they can they can be part of it as much as possible. And then, of course, forming genuine collaborations from the beginning to the extent that it’s possible, because the problem with collaborations is obviously there’s a risk involved in, you know, to get people who want to work kind of in that initial phase that’s free and without any kind of financial recompense. It’s really difficult. So I think that’s what makes genuine collaborations from the ground up sometimes complicated in our systems because we’re busy and we’re broke, you know. So but yeah, I think there’s a lot of sort of tactics one can work with to try to keep remembering where things come from, bringing the initial authors into the ongoing process.

    Adrienne Nothing else to add to that.

    Kate I don’t know if we answered all of your question, though. No, and I’m thinking of it. How does that come into our work?

    Adrienne I mean, for example, one way it comes to our work is, you might want to think about, if you’re going to work with another musician, then you might think about, OK, do I just pay them 50 euros and take what I need or should I think about this as kind of co-authorship so that they have continued like rights to that work. This is a collective decision you can make. Maybe sometimes it doesn’t make sense to have authorship because the person really just wants to be in and out. But it’s worth to think about what kind of, if we’re inside capitalism, what contractual form best actually serves our mutual interests. And, that’s one example.

    Kate We did a recording with a interpretor and migrant from Gambia some years ago in 2015 or 2016, named Yusuph Suso and we paid him for the initial recording, we made a track, but luckily through some years of trying to get funding, we just now received notice that we will have funding to do a performance where he’ll be in Palermo and will be in Berlin. And so we’re hoping that after this all this time, we can actually develop something that’s continues on in this collaborative spirit and that is also funded. So this is something that for us has been it’s it’s really it’s a word. It’s. It feels full circle as far as what we’re trying to do through our processes, and it took time and we had to wait and but this is kind of what what we’re aiming towards, you know, to be able to have these eventually these performances and eventually have them being being funded. Not that funding is the end all and be all, but the fact is we’re all living in this in this capitalist system and we all need to pay rent.

    Adrienne I think at the limits, though, I think I really want to, I want to engage, I want my work to try to approach the end of capitalism and whether that be the kind of final end through revolution or just through creating spaces that exist outside of capitalism, that exclude capitalism and I’m not very close to achieving that yet, but I do think more and more that this has to be the horizon that we’re kind of approaching.

    Laura Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I am and for you, does that mean, like these collectives as opposed to I know you do. You’ve been doing work with different collectives and different residences and different kind of alternative spaces. Is that what you’re referring to?

    Adrienne Maybe. I mean, that’s a good example. Like I said, we did we have been to different kinds of meetings of left wing… different left organisations and individuals, mainly from East European and Central Asia kind of background. And in those places you have temporarily a kind of exclusion of capitalism because everything is communal and everything is shared. Unfortunately, those are very time-limited kind of manifestations. I don’t know exactly… I would like to go further with this as a question.

    I mean, I just I feel like as an artist, I got very much drawn into, speaking personally, into kind of careerism, which, you know, there is a kind of, all around, there’s this kind of careerism which is a form of capitalist realism, but like it then at the day you’ve got to look after your own interests, then you’ve got to like make sure you get the good, like, try to, you know, in order to get to the main stage of a festival somebody else is not on that stage. So then like ultimately like in as a careerist, you want or you desire, even though you might not admit it to yourself, you desire to be present at the expense of other’s exclusion or absence. And we always talk about how there aren’t just enough seats at the table in the way to create art these days. There’s a few big personalities and big names and big brands and everybody else kind of scrounging to get there. And most of most of us never quite getting there. And I don’t like this, this seems to me a terrible, a terrible suffering for the soul of so many people who get into art, because presumably they have like some kind of ambition to change the world or disturb the way the world is functioning, and I think to bring people closer together and to find ways to live life and with a greater degree of harmony. So that’s seems to me like a really cruel irony of what happens when art is pursued as a career.

    Kate Yeah, I mean, I would only I would only add to that that I feel like we’ve been unsuccessfully careerists in the sense that, you know, I think my my art is still tied to its is tied to my work and in the sense that I’m still earning very little and I’m OK with that. I think actually that’s part of my resistance in some way as I consume very little and I earn very little, and that’s the point. I think that makes sense to me. That’s how it should be, actually. I don’t have a car. You know, I don’t buy new clothes. I try not to buy almost anything new. And we ride our bicycles everywhere. We try not to fly. We try to take just trains and buses. We use Linux. We try to use open source software. Adrienne, has a totally unGoogled phone. We try to work outside of systems to the extent that I think that we can. So we try to find small places of resistance and try to form and find networks where we can in small community.

    Adrienne Yeah, this is true.

    Kate However imperfectly, so imperfectly

    Adrienne I think you’re right. I mean, I think that sometimes my work has been sort of like it’s been a tension between these different kinds of ways of of approaching art and working in art. And I think once you start to be an artist, you get drawn into these kind of ideologies around what it is to be successful and what it is to be an artist, but fortunately, I don’t think that I function so well in this ideological system. And if I did, I wouldn’t be here talking to you guys. I’d be in my apartment in Dubai. Um, you know, I don’t know exactly, but. Yeah.

    Laura Yeah. Thank you guys for being so open and honest about this. I think, you know, artists, people that do want to do something for change and that’s out of the system really struggle. And you’re thinking about it really deeply and in a very provocative way. And I think maybe it feels normal to you because you’ve been in Europe for so long, but I think a lot of the people that listen to the podcast are in America and they’re not thinking outside of the systems as deeply. So your perspective is really, I think will be interesting for people.

    Adrienne Great. Also, we can send you some of the titles of the books we’ve been reading in case any of your listeners are curious about the books. We didn’t talk about them in so much detail, I think because we’re still kind of internalising them. So I can send you that in case…

    Laura Oh, I’ll put that in the notes on the website.

    Kate Yeah. I like to add to that that we are trying to form, and maybe your readers are interested because now everything is global and digital so we can speak online about it, which is that we want to do a reading group that’s geared towards artists or workers who don’t think of themselves as academics so that we can engage with critical theory and with reading and incorporate it into our work. Because I think so much of critical theory is actually in some ways it’s like extractive of bodies who are doing either the art or theorising on workers, theorising on artists, sex workers, etc. And so we want to engage with these things as the bodies themselves and as people who don’t necessarily have access to the kind of language. And so it takes us longer to read. It takes us longer to understand it, it takes us longer to figure out how we want to incorporate into our work. So, yeah, we want to do a reading group on extraction with others who are interested in this topic and trying to figure out how to incorporate this critical theory into their work. So, yeah, we can maybe have some information about how to reach us.

    Laura Wonderful. I’ll also put that on the website. So listen to the end of the podcast. So thank you so much.

    Kate Thank you.

    Adrienne Thank you.