I Follow (Trade/ Mining/ Infrastructure)

My artistic research 'I Follow' on Trade/ Mining/Infrastructure, on-going since 2019, has taken different shapes: a series of curated lectures (The Design of Trade, Maritime Made Manifest), a seminar (The Design of Trade: extractivism and material flows), a summer school (Remote Guide to Extractivism), a workshop (Turning the Wheel), research trips (Cyprus, Elefsina, Alaska..) and more. Through these endeavours I have been looking into infrastructures that exist to frame our consumption of materials:extraction and labor, transport, trade and international treaties, pricing, environmental impact, impact on local populations, industry uses, etc..

As artists and designers, consumers and citizen, we may sometimes question where the materials we use come from (I include raw minerals, animal and plant food, processed items, components, etc). But it rarely touches on the labor itself, the imbalance of power between importers and exporters, the trade and treaties that leverage this power and have structured our daily lives without much awareness, the human and animal trafficking at the heart of sustaining this system. This research thus constitutes a collection of knowledge growing over time, linking history, geopolitics, artefacts, artistic practices and considerations of human and non-human exploitations and rights.