Canada's national theme for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale is titled "Extraction", the project profiles and "radically rethinks" Canada's rise as a "global resource empire" by delving into the histories, architectures, and political economies of the industry. In 2014, the well-regarded "Arctic Adaptions: Nunavut at 15" exhibition represented Canada.
Considering that the Great White North is home to 75% of Earth's prospecting and mining companies, resource extraction runs deep in the country's roots. Catherine Crowston of the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) was appointed as the project's Official Commissioner while landscape urbanist Pierre Bélanger will lead the design team as Project Curator and Director.
The project explores the architectures, histories and economies of Canada’s culture of resource extraction, to profile the rise of a “global resource empire” where, in the words of revered political economist Harold Innis, “Canada has emerged as a political entity not in spite of geography, but because of it.” Through the lens of the territorial infrastructures and political ecologies of resource urbanism, extraction engages contemporary and historic media across a range of cultural, spatial and industrial views. It brings together perspectives from business, history, art, activism and elsewhere, to radically rethink Canada’s global position, as home to 75% of our planet’s prospecting and mining companies.
With support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the AGA, the Project & Design Team includes design and media organization OPSYS, in collaboration with: Geoffrey Thün, Kathy Velikov and Colin Ripley of architectural practice RVTR; Nina-Marie Lister with Ryerson University’s Ecological Design Lab; and Kelsey Blackwell of Studio Blackwell.
Additionally, the multimedia exhibition that will be displayed during the Biennale will feature contributions from prominent Canadian creatives like Michael Awad, Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky, Nick de Pencier, Eriel Deranger, Max Haiven, Thomas King, Alessandra Ponte, John Van Nostrand, Mel Watkins, Suzanne Zeller and more.
"Extraction" debuts in Venice on May 27, 2016 in time for the Biennale.
MANIFESTO
Extraction defines Canada, at home and abroad. Of the nearly 20,000 mining projects in the world—from Africa to Asia to Latin America, more than half are Canadian-operated. Not only does the mining economy employ close to 400,000 people across the country, it contributed $52.6 billion to Canada’s GDP in 2012 alone. Globally, more than 75% of prospecting and mining companies on the planet are based in Canada. Seemingly impossible to conceive, the scale of these statistics naturally extends the logic of Canada’s historical legacy as state, nation, and now, as global resource empire. “Not only do imperial colonial powers redefine territories”, according to historian of science Suzanne Zeller, “they also breed new empires, replaying their cycles of dissemination and domination over and over again.” In other words, Canada has become a preeminent resource base and operating platform for the world’s mining industry. If, as Harold Innis described in 1930, “Canada supplied the British and American economies through the exploitation of its considerable bounty”, then it has now become Empire in its own right, home to a legion of its own surface mining firms whose practices reflect Canadian power and presence everywhere on the surface of the planet. As this extractive culture grows, the representation of these complex ecologies of extraction needs to be fully engaged, examined, and exhibited through new languages, discourses and forms of imagination as we move towards the 22nd century.
Opening a wider lens on the cultures of extraction, the project intends to develop a deeper discourse on the complex ecologies of resource extraction. From gravel to gold, across highways and circuit boards, every single aspect of contemporary urban life today is mediated by mineral resources. Through the multimedia language of film, print, and exhibition, the landscape of resource extraction—from exploration, to mining, to processing, to construction, to recycling, to reclamation—can be explored and revealed as the bedrock of contemporary urban life.
THE PROJECT.
The project is a response to Canada’s contemporary culture and global economy of resource extraction. Canadian transnational corporations currently operate close to 9,000 mining projects worldwide, in nearly every country, continent, and ocean on the planet. As a multimedia initiative, the project explores the current and historic legacy of resource extraction from a Canadian perspective with an installation, film, and book featuring prominent creators and influential thinkers, past and present, on Canada’s global resource empire. Co-edited by Pierre Bélanger and Nina-Marie Lister, the book features an array of authors and scholars from across fields of landscape, urbanism, geography, arts, ecology, media, literature, architecture, engineering, science, industry, business and culture. The project will be launched at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, then tour across a series of resource regions throughout Canada to mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation in 2017.
