Going Deep. Going Lithium: Inhabiting Green Technologies
Our residency collaboration with Cornish Lithium continues to evolve! After an open call for artists, where our hub had the great difficulty to select one artist from among a pool of great contributions, the residency program kicked off on June 29th, 2021. An interactive meeting, designed and hosted by Deep Earth Synergies provided the space for a first participatory intervention with Cornish Lithium and artist Alexander Augustus, who joined our team as the selected artist.
In the following week, Alexander travelled to Cornwall, where the on-site residency took place in the offices and premises of Cornish Lithium. During his stay Alexander was also invited to present his approach and art work at the Newlyn School of Art, attended studio visits and met with artist colleagues. Further site visits, discussions with scientists and engineers, online talks, co-creational discussions and many more interactions provided room for Alexander’s work to develop over the span of several weeks.
The residency, which asked for how to incorporate human aspects into technologies, in particular technologies of the mining sector, is a first endeavour to tackle the problems we are facing as a global society, from a multidimensional perspective. This perspective includes the intangible and tacit knowledges and empowers humans in their imagination and creative ways of solution finding. Can art works and the process of co-creation thus stimulate a wider audience of scientists and engineers to merge the old with the new, to open up new perspectives and effective interactions with society and the environment? What impact does co-creation between the industry, science and the arts have on the participants involved? Many exciting questions to tackle…
In the end, Alexander designed an audio narration “Power from the blazing stone” in a co-creational attempt, which is on display now. Alexander, a fan of the works by sci-fi authors Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick, fused visions of a responsible future in mining with the Cornish mining heritage and mythology. Acclaimed Cornish actor Edward Rowe, of the BAFTA winning movie Bait, narrated the five episode story, which helped to embed the work locally. Have a look!
Photos: ©2021 Dana Finch
