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Visuality and Extraction: Materiality, Interpretation, Power
16 June 2025 - 18 June 2025
9:30AM - 5:00PM
Hotel Indigo, 9 Old Elvet, Durham, DH1 3HL
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Free to attend
Join our cross-disciplinary, inter-faculty symposium addressing the multi-faceted dimensions of extraction through visual media, storytelling traditions, creative and interpretive practices! The symposium and discussion includes a Keynote address with David Campbell, and a Keynote plus workshop/masterclass with Laura Sillars. Hosted by the Durham Centre for Visual Arts and Culture (CVAC).
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Visuality and Extraction
Materiality, Interpretation, Power
Symposium Dates: 16th-18 June
Location: Hotel Indigo, 9 New Elvet, Durham, DH1 3HL
Keynote Speakers:
Dr David Campbell, Director of Education, VII Foundation
Dr Laura Sillars, Director of Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA)
Processes and concepts of extraction have long been central to both material and metaphorical frameworks within visual culture. From the geological to the epistemological, extraction shapes our engagement with tools, narratives, and histories.
Join interdisciplinary researchers, artists and practitioners for this 3-day event, addressing extraction and visuality. This symposium seeks to examine the multifaceted dimensions of extraction as it manifests across visual mediums, storytelling traditions and interpretive practices. Colleagues interested in exploring new interdisciplinary or collaborative approaches are particularly encouraged to attend.
- Please REGISTER TO ATTEND: https://forms.office.com/e/ArXhLAbL3C
Full programme below.
Programme
Monday 16 June
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9.00-9.30 |
Registration and welcome |
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9.30-12.30 |
Keynote |
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Laura Sillars |
Mineral Technologies: Tracing the aesthetics of extraction from arts history to the digital screen. |
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12.30-13.15 |
Lunch |
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13.15-14.45 |
Panel |
Photography |
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Rio Creech |
Rubber and Rifles: the role of photography in the fight to dominate the natural rubber industry in late colonial Malaya |
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Rosalind Hayes |
Extracting Animals: Creaturely Materiality and Early Photography |
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Sophie Piper |
Towards an Inclusive Re/visualisation of Women’s Work |
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14.45-15.15 |
Break |
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15.15-16.15 |
Film screening |
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Penelope Anthias |
Urukurenda: In Search of the Land Without Evil (Ĩvĩ Maraëï) |
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16.30 – 18.00 |
Sabina Sallis |
How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Planet: A Non-Extractive Approach to Art and Knowledge. Pedagogy Against Extraction: Earthbound Learning as Radical Visuality. (Art walk) |
Tuesday 17 June
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9.00-9.30 |
Tea/coffee |
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9.30-11.15 |
Panel |
Questions of method |
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Sahar Sagha |
Instagram as a Digital Mine During the Protest |
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Peter Whitton |
Extracting academic identity: doors and desks, the social production of personal university spaces |
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Megan Kuster and Sarah Comyn |
The ‘EXTRACTS’ project: Fostering collectives of creative-critical practice |
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11.15-11.30 |
Break |
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11.30-13.00 |
Panel |
Temporalities of Extraction: Narratives of Social and Environmental Violence and Transformation |
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Jenny Terry |
Sedimenting Black Geologies in Fiction and Art |
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Adam Bridgen |
Imagining Slow Violence during the Industrial Revolution: Metaphors of Extraction in Labouring-Class Poetry |
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Rebecca Macklin |
Visualising Relations in the Tar Sands: Extraction, Aesthetics, and Repair |
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13.00-13.45 |
Lunch |
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13.45-15.15 |
Panel |
Plans, maps, and information |
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Mike Crang |
‘Through the hush’d Chorasmian waste… shorn and parcell’d Oxus strains along’: from visions of engineering to depictions of disaster, from imaginaries of abundance to emptiness in the demise of the Aral Sea. |
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Renwen Xu |
Extracting Meaning in Multimodal Museum Spaces: A Cognitive Perspective on Visitor Experience |
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Oliver Betts |
From Mine to Station to Sea – Extractive Stories in the collections of the National Railway Museum and Locomotion. |
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15.15-15.45 |
Break |
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15.30-17.00 |
Panel |
Games and exploration |
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Simon James |
Maps, Male Bonding and Making it Up: Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World |
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Ladan Cockshut |
Did you Factorio that in when you extracted No Man's Sky?: Minecrafting the visualities of extraction in videogames. |
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Inês Barreiros |
The 16th hole of Vale do Lobo Golf Resort: plantanoceno, visuality, and ancestral future |
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17.00-18.30 |
Stuart Jones |
Geology walk around Durham |
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18.30 |
Optional pub + dinner |
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Wednesday 18 June
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9.00-9.30 |
Tea/coffee |
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9.30-12.00 |
Keynote |
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David Campbell |
Title tbc. |
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12.00-13.00 |
Lunch |
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13.00-15.00 |
Round-up and next steps |
Open discussion |
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15.00 |
Close |
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- Please REGISTER TO ATTEND: https://forms.office.com/e/ArXhLAbL3C
- Download the CVAC Visuality and Extraction Symposium_16-18 June 2025_Programme
- Abstracts: Visuality and Extraction_abstracts and speaker biographies
We look forward to you joining us!
Contact Information:
- For questions or additional information, please contact us at cvac@Durham.ac.uk.
- Specific queries about the programme can be sent to the academic organisers: Jonathan Long (j.j.long@durham.ac.uk) or Ladan Cockshut (ladan.cockshut@durham.ac.uk).
Sign up to the CVAC mailing list via our secure form, for email updates on all our events and opportunities!