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Tour Erzgebirge: Taube Erde

The battery continues to be a black box, feeding the myth of progress and the vision of an unlimited electricity supply in a historical moment when the run for energy is fueling increasingly visibly proxy conflicts worldwide. To try to unpack this black box, the two days Taube Erde tour focuses on one of its main components, lithium, looking towards the effects of its extraction in multiple localities. Anchoring the enquiry in Freiberg and Zinnwald (Saxony), where the domestic extraction of lithium is planned to kick off soon, we will trace socio-material ecologies of past and present extraction in the region and throw light on the global repercussions of one of its least known exports, “scientific mining”. Through contributions from artists, experts, local residents, and activists, we will reconstruct long disappeared sites of extraction, analyze common trajectories between historical and current mining-rushes and bring to the fore pre-existing and potential modes of resistance among humans and non-humans alike. While reflecting and refracting the continuing history of mining, including its representation, we will also discuss the ways and possibilities of the (care) labour of environmental activism in “de-populating” regions and dialogue about the elusive utopia of the battery, asking how both scientific and everyday practice can step out the paradigm of growth.

With: Ana Alenso, Helmuth Albrecht (TU Bergakademie Freiberg), Aurora Castillo, Oscar Choque (Ayni, Verein für Ressourcengerechtigkeit e.V.), Maryam Katan, Andrea Riedel (Stadt- und Bergbaumuseum Freiberg), Jens Weber (Grüne Liga Osterzgebirge e.V.), Featuring “In the Name of Lithium” directed by Tian Cartier and Martin Longo

Contributions in EN and DE, translation provided if needed.
Limited seats, information on registration will follow on 23 May.