Eray Çayl: Extractivism as Aesthetics

• Lectures & Discussions

Through the prism of northern Kurdistan, this lecture by Eray Çayl responds to a world of increasing contradictions where ecological sensibilities proliferate alongside extractivism and its images. Çayl works through these contradictions by tracing extractivism to its aesthetics—how it renders the colonized and their homelands available to the senses only as exploitable and marketable resources. In his lecture at Kunstverein in Hamburg, he thinks with contemporary art and experimental film that are critical of environments and visualities shaped by colonially grounded nation-statism. Here, Çayl encounters subject positions—including his own—that are not only differentially affected by and implicated in extractivism but also open to transformation through collective work. Extractivism as Aesthetics argues that images' potential to challenge extractivism lies in prompting reflection on their own implication in violent environments and visualities as well rendering harm and survival visible. Instead of oscillating between self-serving critique and heroization of individual artists/artworks, the book searches for an aesthetics that defies extractivism in painstaking collaboration, reciprocity, and relationality. The lecture presents insights from his book of the same title, forthcoming in 2025 from the University of Texas Press.

The event will be held in English.