< Program overview

The foundation of our digital world can be found beneath our earthly surfaces. We mine lithium in Chile for our batteries, and use cobalt from Congo for magnets. Computer chips are made from silicon, and we seal our devices with Indonesian tin – holding our smartphone we literally have the world in our hands. At the same time, this process is disrupting the earth through large-scale mining to extract these minerals, resulting in inhumane working conditions, mountains of e-waste and ecological destruction.

These consequences of extractivism – the extraction of natural resources from the earth, such as minerals, to be sold on the global market – are often overlooked. The dominant narratives are about economic growth, digital progresses and sustainable innovation. More and more mineral resources are being extracted for our growing ‘green’ energy supply and information technologies.

By subverting these dominant narratives with spiritual, magical and speculative perspectives, the exhibition makes room for the often underexposed stories of extractivism. They deal with military gain, complex production chains, neo-colonial exploitation, political conflict, and irreversible ecological consequences. The hidden stories are told by cyber-witches of the future, gods of rare earth, phantoms of nostalgia, and the minerals themselves.

Magic runs like a thread through the exhibition – not to disguise extractivism in mystery, but rather to dig up what is hidden by the dominant narratives. By means of alienation, critical reflection is given on the current situation of mineral extraction. In this way, our ideas of what a natural landscape actually is are examined, and the impact of extractivism on it gets emphasized. New rituals question our fleeting relationship with our smartphones and laptops, which were not built to last for a long period of time. They shine a light on how this planned obsolescence contrasts sharply with the systematic exploitation of workers in the production of our devices.

Utopian vistas depict new ways in which minerals are no longer part of unsustainable capitalist structures that push us towards irreversible climate disasters. The artworks in What Are Men to Rocks and Mountains? rebel against our endless desire for innovation and control, to which the extraction of minerals is inextricably linked. They regard minerals as independent entities that are given a voice in a world in which Western people are no longer the center of attention. For what are men compared to rocks and mountains?

Platform P–OST is closed in August due to the summerholiday. On the first of September we are open again.