experiments in the sonoro-materialist landscape of extractivism
Completed in July 2024, “Experiments in the Sonoro-Materialist Landscape of Extractivism” is the theoretical and practical master’s thesis authored by Santiago Burelli for the graduation of the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts MFA from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).
When one enters the depths of the earth, several hundreds of meters into a (un)hallowed gutted mine, a barren cemetery, once foundation to the naturescape exposed to sun and sky and wind and rain above, there is silence and calm amidst the productive epicenter of humanity’s most important prime materials. This artificial tranquility is quick to depart as the work day begins. Work for ore that has moved men to heinous acts of war, slavery, and treachery since even before the bronze age was fully underway. These materials still enslave and destroy millions (people as well as acres of biosphere).
The extractivist chain of production can be broadly described as any process that tears, takes, and uses, via processing technologies, any and all naturally occurring resources. The reality of our human existence is that we are all extractivists - for better or worse, we depend upon non-negotiable material realities to subsist and arguably survive - ethics, for the most part, out the window. Yet it is impressive that we surpassed the rather obvious exploitation of earth and sea-based raw materials and arrived at atmospheric extraction via the cryogenic liquefaction of air - the process by which we extract noble gasses including neon and argon. Our extractivist creativity is as impressive as it is destructive.
The never-ending need for raw materials progresses over time due to changing technological requirements and improving technologies. However, ancient, colonial, and neo-colonial extractivist practices always share common aspects: need and greed, exploitation of marginalized communities, and environmental damage as driving factors and by-products. The Euro-centric colonialist exploitation of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, was marked by eras of slavery, genocide, and colonial regimes. Neo-colonial global exploitation of these same regions is somehow just as sinister by creating a larger group of exploiters and further separating while also implicating the exploited from the oppressors. The history of humankind is fundamentally one of suffering and material and human exploitation - these are constants that plague humanity as a race; extractivism is beyond time and ethnicity. What were once nation-versus-nation races toward exploitation, have now become a two-tier exploitative relationship between the global need (corporations and consumers) and corrupt governments exploiting their own people to boost profits, enriching only a privileged few. One example is Venezuela’s underreported illegal gold mining disaster that takes global gold demand to the depths of protected Amazonian land, resulting in modern-day slavery and ecological destruction. This ongoing catastrophe ultimately only benefits Venezuela’s military and totalitarian government and the black market that buys cheap. These crises, happening in mining centers around the globe, combined with the collective ignorance of consumers and producers in High-Income Countries (HIC), result in social disorders including Shifting Baseline Syndrome and what I describe as the “Zooification” of the Amazon and Amazonian Aboriginal Peoples.
These issues are however met with resistance by some as a new era of circular economies and re/upcycling spring forward in the face of uncontrolled and exponential anthropogenic mass production (Moll 2023, 1). Artistically, new tools and archaeological methods combine to create new mediums and processes that question extractivist acceleration and look back at historic creative technologies in an important move to preserve and re-use materials that have already been extracted rather than opt for the new model, the new medium, and the virgin resource. In the face of new technologies that threaten as well as assist artistic creation, how can we incorporate material preservation and re/upcycle while still moving forward, further driving the artistic discourse to break down and critique a society facing as many new problems as it fixes each year?
In this thesis I will set the groundwork and context for extractivist processes as they relate to artistic production and sound studies and how these separate forces are manifest within the production process and results of my practice-based artwork Extracting Sonoro Material (2024).
In this body of work, I create a sonoro-materialist analysis of the extractivist landscape. Through the use of a combination of raw materials and industrially processed components, I designed a sound installation that can ultimately be deemed a synthesizer and instrument that showcases different aspects of the mineral and atmospheric extractivist process. These include mining, smelting, casting, electronic component processing, gas liquefaction, and industrial production. The sonic and sculptural products of the installation are unfiltered embodiments of sonic and sculptural materialism - attempted approximations toward the Kantian idea of the “thing in itself.” Through errant forms of creation based on aleatory creative methods, the goal was to formulate a series of experiments that showcase objects and sound as pure materiality, and, among other things, challenge the conventions of representative and sonic-art sculpture. Remelted scrap metal and raw components are laid out as plainly as possible and activated with electricity to create, what I consider, an example of material sonification in one of its most accurate forms. This installation also challenges the semantics of sonification, a term I deem widely misused within the sound studies realm.
Finally, the installation opposes the symbolic, figurative, and representational within sculptural production to create a new visual language that showcases an artificial regression into the natural material form existing within the confines and limitations of the white cube gallery space. The installation breaks down the damning purity of the white cube and usurps it with filth, danger, and ostentatiously confident displays of labor. Ultimately, the installation Extracting Sonoro Material creates a space and environment reminiscent of the hazard, noise, and enigmatic productive process in mineral extraction. Of the work, the artist Katherine Sultan Erminy wrote:
“As I stepped into Santiago Burelli’s installation Extracting Sonoro Material, a sense of disorientation flashed me. The dimly lit space and the sound of alarms created a sense of urgency as if I had stumbled into a dream. The stones/metals, and electronic components sparked a mix of fascination and desire. These sculptures give you a sense of power, a heavy reminiscent mix of minerals. The experience literally gives you the feeling of being in a deep cave with the walls filled with gold.” (Sultan Erminy 2024)
In her review, Sultan Erminy captures the exact tone of the piece. Urgency, alarm, and disorientation - an eerie surrealistic mix between metallic ore and its offspring, electronic components - meant to bring the audience into the mine, into the factory, into the poisoned and decrepit waterways affected by both, all of these - the product of centuries of the raw material extractivist stranglehold upon our society.
Through the following chapters of theoretical and documentation-based text, I weave a narrative of how material is extracted from the earth and through numerous processes, communities, cultures, and movements becomes not only a materialist force but also a sonoro materialist force that wields its agency, undeniably influencing our perception of reality and even influencing that which extends far beyond the capabilities of human awareness. Sonoro materialism exists independent from our limitations, far past human reach to the noumenal realm.
FULL MASTERS THESIS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXTRACTING SONORO MATERIAL: A THEORETICAL INTRODUCTION 7
EXTRACTIVISM: A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 10
THE EXOTIFICATION AND ZOOIFICATION OF THE AMAZON: HYPOCRISY IN GLOBAL DEMAND FOR RAW MATERIALS 15
ILLEGAL MINING TOWNS AND MODERN-DAY SLAVERY: FROM POLLUTION TO SOLUTIONS 18
THE EXTREMES OF EXTRACTIVISM: A “COLLECTIVE AMNESIA” FROM THE UNDERGROUND TO THE CLOUDS 22
THE NEW EXTRACTIVIST INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: CIRCULAR ECONOMIES 25
THE SEMANTICS OF SONIFICATION: TRUE SONIFICATION AND SONIC MATERIALITY 28
SCULPTURAL MATERIALITY: ERRANT CREATIVITY, ALLOYS, TEXTURE, ELECTRONICS 32
THEORETICAL CONCLUSION 38
DOCUMENTATION 40
EXTRACTING SONORO MATERIAL: THE INSTALLATION 41
ORIGINS OF EXTRACTING SONORO MATERIAL: FROM ACTIVISM TO STUDIO SPACES 42
EXTRACTING SONORO MATERIAL: A STEP-BY-STEP APPROACH 47
CASTING: ALEATORY FIRE 47
ELECTRONICS: CLOSING THE LOOP 62
GALLERY INSTALLATION 62
DOCUMENTATION CONCLUSION 65
BIBLIOGRAPHY 66
APPENDIX A 69