Merely bearing witness is not enough. As visionaries and outsiders, we are capable of appropriating and reconfiguring contemporary propaganda and re-deploying it in service of our own alternative concepts and transformative objects. We can employ photography, video, painting, sculpture, land art, performances, installations, site-specific work, and various hybrids thereof to conduct “hardcore, nasty” investigations of extraction—all of its forms and all of its consequences, including its effects on human health and the social and cultural damage it causes, especially to poor, minority, and indigenous communities.We can follow a new model of inclusivity, recognizing and respecting stakeholders of all races, cultures, genders, and ages; and helping guarantee that the historically marginalized people who've suffered most because of natural resource exploitation are provided opportunities for interpreting their own experience and subverting oppressive narratives. We can expose and interrogate the abundant evidence of Faustian overreach most people don’t wish to acknowledge, and re-represent it with all the eye-opening, assumption-smashing power the arts have always exerted on the human condition. We can counter the violent subjugation of nature brought about by mining and drilling with the playful but liberating strategy of détournement. Through radical engagements and inspired derangements we can destabilize the way extractive industry is portrayed and consumer culture promoted. We can hijack and reroute the conversation about what constitutes a good life in the opening decades of the 21st century. We can sound an alarm.
We can raise a ruckus.
—Edwin Dobb
1950 - 2019
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