1st Edition

Arts and Extractivism in the Global Present

Edited By Liliana Gómez, Alexander Brust Copyright 2026
236 Pages 20 Color & 36 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

236 Pages 20 Color & 36 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Through the lens of contemporary art, this book focuses on social ecologies and those spaces that are characterized, on the one hand, by a high degree of biodiversity and, on the other, by a long history of the extraction of resources, (neo)colonial relationships, and extractivism. Contributors discuss the importance of ignored knowledge practices and systems as well as alternative designs of... Read more

1. Introduction: Arts After Extractivism
Liliana Gómez
Part I: Aesthetics and Extractivism
2. Inmundo: Unspecific Aesthetics and the Arts of Survivance
Jens Andermann
3. Pharmakon: Aesthetic Practices, Submerged Modes, and Plant–Human Entanglements
Liliana Gómez
4. Sensing Extraction: Visualizing the New Geography of Extractivism in Venezuela
Gianfranco Selgas
Part II: Ethnographies Otherwise
5. Fieldwork Notebooks
Michael Taussig
6. Creating Pluriversities: Education to Protect the Earth: A Conversation Between Hernando Chindoy and Cristina Rodríguez
7. The Encounter of Two Feather Cloaks: A Conversation Between Glicéria Tupinambá and Alexander Brust
8. To Feather the Shock: Extraction, Copying, and Rebreeding of Ethnographic Materials for Museum Collections
Khadija Von Zinnenburg Carroll
Part III: New Ecologies and the Arts
9. Poetic Postnatures: Pyropoetry and New Ecologies of Megafires in the Paraná Delta
Azucena Castro
10. Towards a Pedagogy of Healing and Reparations
Carolina Caycedo
11. Learning From Artemisia: A Conversation Between Uriel Orlow, Liliana Gómez, and Alexander Brust
Epilogue
12. Cultural Extractivism: A Few Comments on a Key Document
Bénédicte Savoy

Biography

Liliana Gómez is Professor of Art and Society at University of Kassel/Kunsthochschule Kassel, documenta Institut, Germany. 

Alexander Brust is Head of the American Department and Curator at the Museum der Kulturen Basel, Switzerland.