Mapping,drawing,weaving,writing counter-extractive cartographies of mining sites

Abstract

In the context of an accelerated demand for resources, this article assembles counter-extractive cartographies from areas of ore extraction which react to loss and questions of urgent heritage, and project (post)mining futures. The cartographies focus on intersectional feminist, Indigenous, and migratory voices, which are often absent at decision-making tables. Lena Sjötoft’s sketch of incisions into the land of the Sámi, Margit Anttila’s embroidered map of changes in her home deeply affected by mining, mapped care activities in an Austrian mining town, and Ina Knobblock’s practices of writing–weaving Sámi feminisms show anticolonial and feminist modes of local struggles. Altering and nuancing knowledges about areas of extractivism, and imagining their futures otherwise, they engage artistic practices and situated literacies. The discussion of their practices is based on eight years of site-specific work undertaken at two different sites of ore extraction in Sábme/Sweden and Austria, often in collaboration with local practitioners.