Abstract

As new extractive frontiers emerge in the Anthropocene, this thesis examines the way artworks by Mexican artist Marcela Armas and Canadian artist François Quévillon intervene in the capitalist paradigms, worldviews, and technologies that enable the extraction and exploitation of nature, mineral resources, and human labour. Tsinamekuta, 2016-2021, by Armas stands as a defence against mining practices on Indigenous land in Mexico, and revolves around a magnetic mineral called pyrrhotite and its radical potential to hold Earth memory. Esker/Lithium, 2019-2024, by Quévillon enters an iPhone into dialogue with a controversial prospecting lithium mine in Quebec, and considers the way novel forms of extraction emerge within digital, technological, and information-saturated environments. These artworks cultivate an ecology of practices that navigate assemblages of technologies, extractive zones, and environments across varied topographies of power. The theoretical foundation for this thesis draws from Elizabeth Povinelli’s concept of geontopower, Jason Moore’s inquiry into capitalism as an earth-moving and environment-making process, Vanessa Watt’s Place-Thought, and Franco “Bifo” Berardi and Jean Baudrillard’s ideas around semiocapitalism and simulacrum, amongst other authors. These thinkers investigate the climatic and social catastrophe of our epoch and challenge the ways in which dominant strategies of power dictate relations to nonhuman entities and to nature. This thesis thus explores what it means to be attentive to, become-with, and form alliances with different forms of existence through artistic practice, offering ways to move forward within the precarious and challenging times known as the Anthropocene.