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Centre for Visual Arts and Culture
A visual of an abstract eye

Post-Extractive Imaginaries talk series

Register here (link TBA)

1 April 2026 - 1 April 2026

4:00PM - 5:00PM

Online - Teams

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Post-Extractive Imaginaries is a public conversation series developed in partnership with Durham University Centre for Visual Arts and Culture, bringing leading artists and researchers into dialogue around the cultural, political and visual legacies of extractive modernity. The series explores how contemporary visual culture engages with questions of land, labour, technology and value, and how alternative imaginaries might be articulated through artistic and critical practice.

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Anton Carl Luplau (?) for Den kgl. Porcelainsfabrik [The Royal Danish Porcelain Factory], Bergmann, 1784-1790. Feltspatic porcelain painted in enamel colours, 14.8 x 8 x 8.1 cm. The National Museum, O

Cobalt, speculation and Danish-Norwegian art, ca. 1750-1820

This session focuses on the role of artisanal crafts, art and extraction in the transition from a mercantile, imperial state to that of an industrializing market economy in Denmark-Norway. 

We will begin with the role of porcelain in mapping geologies in the mid-18th century to the use of the mineral cobalt in glass and oil painting in the early 19th century. By addressing cobalt´s entanglement in both the political economy, extractive processes and aesthetics, this session proposes art historical methods to grapple with our planetary relationship to critical minerals and their possible futures.

Bio: Helene Engnes Birkeli is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the project TiO2: How Norway Made the World Whiter (NFR334659) at the University of Bergen, funded by The Research Council of Norway. 

 

The Post-Extractive Visualities 2026 programme includes contributions from Marc Wilson, whose project The Edge of Ruin examines sites of rationality, power and their limits; Esther Leslie, whose work on cultural histories of industry, materials and modernity offers critical frameworks for understanding extraction and its afterlives; and Helene Engnes Birkeli, whose practice engages with post-extractive thinking through artistic and research-led enquiry. Please see sidebar for links to the other events in the series. 

Pricing

No cost for participants