This text is the performance score of off-site storytelling about we♥ copper & copper ♥ us. It is an ongoing diary of my intra-actions with mineral bodies. On each occasion it is performed differently, usually in accompaniment to the audiovisuals of mineralizacija. For the show at Cultural Front GRAD, i performed a version in Serbian.
occupy tilt withdraw atmospheres lithosphere mechanosphere
decelerate copperlove
they come from late Mesozoic — eighty-four point six million years ago
#copper #foreveryoung
Copper-gold area of Bor-Majdanpek, East Serbia, is home to world-class minerals. Humans have looked for copper since about 5,500 BC. Modern mining began in 1903.
Not everything is metal, but metal is everywhere. Metal is the <burning heart> of all matter1.
Miners of early Eneolith followed natural canals of the ore’s body, the size that allowed access to one or two human bodies. They entered the strata up to the depth of around 20m, lower limit of oxidation zone.
“they grow slow …… yet they grow, ‘ripen’ in tellurian, earthly darkness.”2
nomadic inorganic lively mediators
neurons transistors resistors capacitors
metallurgical triangulation
planetary computation
panpsychic senses
internet of stones
nonhumans other than nonmen3
Historically speaking, mining has been understood as giving a hand to the earth to accelerate its processes of mineralisation.4
A mountain peopled by ‘unique, individual’ matters, desiring-machines of multispecies confederations hybrid intra-actions breakbeat diffractions chaosmosis unearthly symbioses
dances to dance beyond mankind
humans and #copper, a complicated affair ongoing for about 10,000 years
The results of the investigation indicate the presence of hitherto unknown base-metal mineralisation, accompanied locally by gold. …airborne electromagnetic data were confused by transmitter interference and the magnetic data was of very limited use in detecting where minerals grow.5
different lives differing speeds atmospheres that make difference
The first prognosis show that the Mining and Smelting Combine will finish the year with a “positive zero”.
“…exploration & #mining venture depends on a number of factors, imponderable and ponderable”6
geology ≠ rationalist epistemology
#cuprite beyond (human) measure
the hardest net-workers of us all
#silver #platinum #tantalum #aluminium #zinc #gold
behind the screens, matter sweats
refuse the ‘#labour of #love’
demand #wages for #earthwork
It was found that the airborne electromagnetic data were confused by transmitter interference
and the magnetic data was of very limited use in feeling
where minerals grow.7
technophilia ⇆ (double bind) geophilia [mineralophilia?!]
not only you and me, “all the species are being mined, #data mined, earth mined”8
“… after many centuries of looking, the successful discovery of workable mineral deposits took eight years of intensive shaft sinking and related exploration…”9
“I think you value consciousness too high and rock too little”10
#copper ≠ mind & #copper ≠ matter
“The problem will be further exacerbated by the near cessation of mineral exploration particularly at the grassroot level …
as current mines reach the end of their natural life.”11
share the ‘fragility of things’ with #tantalum #yttrium #europium #neodymium #lanthanum12
freedoms to move freedoms to rest
Deep Engine inferred anonymous veins—six hundred thousand eighteen tonnes—whose population is made of one point ninety-five copper, four point twenty-two zinc and zero point two grams per tonne of gold
copper(I)-sulfate is not reducible or irreducible to anything else
est. total #copper recoveries from so-called waste:
– Africa: 40% in 1994; – China: 70% in 2005; – Europe: 73% in 1999; – Latin America&Caribbean: 84% in 1994; – USA: 49% in 1994
labour point of view of
#copper #silver #platinum #europium #tantalum #lanthanum #yttrium #aluminium #zinc #gold
socially necessary unpaid work
to some society to some necessarily unpaid work
Do minerals “struggle for life”, like we do, in their own unique, singular ways?
un-oedipal triangulation
iron copper sulphur
oxidations conversions fusions
fireworks red lights butterflies13
‘people minerals are strange, when you’re a stranger’14
possible futures of #copper are “not sufficiently contained in the present”
// each rock a volcano, a brick or a shred for its cabinet of curiosities //
lithics and nonlithics allure, charm & seduce one anothers, summoning unforetold ardent adventures15
metals “the strangest things”, it’s like “loving the alien”16
Thanks to the exquisite crafts of planned obsolescence, our phones live so short, too short
“possibilities do not sit still” // earths are not paintings on the wall //
By itself, #copper is #copper; but, “bundled with relations of class, empire & appropriation”
It is the partial object A for alfa-male-humans.
“Earth is all the free resources – gifts of nature – usable in production”17
#capitalism vs. #nature18
Lithium beryllium boron magnesium aluminium silicon scandium titanium vanadium chromium manganese iron cobalt nickel copper zinc gallium germanium arsenic sellenium
Strontium yttrium zirconium niobium molybdenum rhodium palladium silver cadmium indium tin antimony tellurium
Barium hafnium tantalum tungsten rhenium osmium iridium platinum gold mercury thallium lead
Lanthanum cerium praseodymium neodymium promethium samarium europium gadolinium terbium dysprosium holmium erbium thulium ytterbium lutetium
they don’t have substitutes, on this planet19
Copper heart oxygen heart copper
// oxidation joint extra-organic perspiration //
According to the current Serbian mining law, exploration licences are valid initially for three years. They can be extended two times per two years. After each extension, surface of the permit is reduced by 25%.
// run run run gold is on the run //
to “mix our #labour with the #earth”20 is a compulsory neighbourhood work for
post-capitalist post-humans
“how far can you send emotions ooo-oooh
can #copper cross the oceans?”21
Metallurgists of antiquity justified their labours to the gods saying that they “help” minerals to “grow ripe” faster22
what holds them together is desire, with and against inverse causations and molecular reconfigurations
surfacing hearts vs. mining earths #copper #tantalum #gold #platinum #zinc #yttrium #lanthanum #praseodymium #europium
The value of production is expected to grow, but the waste flows & CO2eq emissions associated are also likely to increase during the evaluated periods.23
“We are leaving the Hole
We haven’t seen any worker with a pickax or a shovel on the shoulder
We haven’t seen any horses pulling ore wagons through narrow corridors
There are no horses left in the Hole
There are only stories about them.”24
sous le soleil dans le #plusquehumain #multiverse
proliferating multitudes conspiring animal vegetal mineral insurrections sexual involutions beginnings of wonderful friendships
we don’t know yet what a malachite can do
minerals are not really objects nor machines nor subjects nor resources nor materials
// stuffs that some humans’ dreams are made of //
“Whilst there are some areas in which blue sky is appearing, the expected resurgence in the resources sector that we discussed this time last year has generally not yet materialised…”25
labour systems, divestment strategies, and care-taking patterns in which the generation time of information machines became compatible with the generation times of human, animal, plant & mineral communities26
there are many internets in this world & we are not the only beings in our internet
“The ore is raised from the mine by the whimsey in large heavy masses and is then thrown over a stage onto the ground below where it comes into charge
of the cobblers, principally women and boys, copper ladies or copar ladis.”27
that mineralisation in you and me, holding our soft parts, building freedoms from gravity, intricate x-ray pictures and macabre dances
refusing to forget Tilva Roš, Mynydd Parys, Buenavista del Cobre, Remojärvi, Kytäja, Matkajärvi, Vestlax, Ingesson, Lägsmansgård, Porkkala, Attu, Frankböle, Guldholmen, Simsiö, Kalliokangas, Metsäkylä, Liuhtari, Takaluoma, Orijärvi, Pitkäranta, Outokumpu, Ylöjärvi, Aijala, Luikonlahti, Hällinmäki, Vuonos, Hammaslahti, Pahtavuoma
and other red mountains
where colusite + sulvanite + arsenosulvanite + chalcopyrite + covellite + enargite + sphalerite
grow together
meeting the lithosphere halfway, “in this matter, the truth is that we haven’t seen anything yet.”28
an alien to us, a foreigner, coming from the other side, bringing fire from below or from the sky29
// meteorites inteplanetary messengers mineral spacetime travel companions //
halcopyrite lies beyond measure
#copper #love takes time, #deep time
“Significantly other to each other, in specific difference,we signify in the flesh a nasty developmental infection called [inhuman] #love.”30
#occupy #withdraw #copper keep it close keep it in the ground31
Avicena, around 1000 AD, says that “romantic love” is not uniquely given to humankind, it waves through all that dwells in the skies and in the earth, fervent in vegetal and mineral world.32
It has seen things we humans wouldn’t believe… becomings of oolites, concretions, stalactitic-formations, -reniform & -botryoidal-accumulations… All these moments will be lost in time … like tears in a flash furnace … time for metalmorphosis…33
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Notes:
- Based on Deleuze & Guattari (1987).
- From Eliade, M. (1962) The Forge and the Crucible. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Following Rosi Braidotti.
- Following Mircea Eliade (1962).
- Based on Cooper, D.C., Nutt, M.J.C., Smith, I.F., Easterbrook, G.D. (1989) Base-metal and gold mineralisation in north-west Anglesey, North Wales. Technical Report WF/89/2. British Geological Survey.
- Amstutz, G.C. In Gasparrini, C. (1993) Gold and Other Precious Metals: From Ore to Market. p. vi.
- Based on report of Anglesey Mining Plc.
- Following Rosi Braidotti.
- Based on Cooper, D.C., Nutt, M.J.C., Smith, I.F., Easterbrook, G.D. (1989) Base-metal and gold mineralisation in north-west Anglesey, North Wales. Technical Report WF/89/2. British Geological Survey.
- Kim Stanley Robinson in Wark, M. (2015) Molecular Red.
- Anglesey Mining Plc (2015, 27 Nov) Half yearly report for the six months to 30 September 2015.
- Following William Connolly.
- Following Aleksandra Mitovski.
- Following the Doors.
- Based on Cohen, J.J. (2015) Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman.
- With David Bowie.
- After Malthus, in Foster, B. (2000) Marx’s Ecology. p. 167.
- Drawn from the “periodic table of substitute performance” in Graedel et al. (2015: 6298).
- After John Locke.
- Based on La Roux’s song In for the Kill.
- Based on Tuusjärvi, M., Mäenpää, I., Vuori, S., Eilu, P., Kihlman, S. & Koskela, S. (2013) Developments in mining and quarrying industries in Finland: Scenarios to 2020 and 2030. Report of Investigation 200. Espoo: Geological Survey of Finland.
- Translated from Čukić, R. (1975) Tamo gde teku bakar i zlato. Gornji Milanovac: Kulturni Centar.
- Anglesey Mining Plc (2015, 31 Jul) Annual Financial Report.
- Following Donna J. Haraway.
- Faraday, M. (1819) Tour in Wales.
- Following Deleuze and Guattari.
- Based on Eliade (1962).
- Haraway, D.J. (2003: 3).
- Following Klein, N. (2014).
- Based on Eliade (1962).
- Based on Blade Runner.