Underground Studies: Extractivism and Decolonization in the Americas/Abiayala

Catalog description

In times of the environmental crisis, one of the most important things humans should do is to reflect on how and why we got here. How did we allow our waters to be contaminated? Why did we destroy forests? Why do we understand ourselves as superior to other living beings? To answer these questions, we will think of the environmental degradation of Abiayala (the Guna word the Americas) from the point of view of artists, documentarians, and writers that think about different underground spaces and engage with questions of ecofeminism and extractivism. We will consider the environmental effects of mines, industry, ecological manipulation, and even science. And we will engage with the work of Indigenous peoples, Latinx, women, and others with anti-colonial perspectives, such as Emil Keme, Macarena Gómez Barris, Maricela Guerrero, Yásnaya Aguilar Gil, Natalie Diaz, among others.