This piece was performed as ‘a rant’ to an audience at the C-Mine itself and was the result of field research conducted during an art residency in Genk with the Post Film Collective at Jester.
compulsive mine copious mine consciousness mine cantankerous mine with rare awareness
mine of the real fragility but also resilience of nature mine mine consumptive mine
counterpoised mine cranky mine crushingly mine carbonic mine with huge amounts of carbon
dioxide expelled from volcanoes almost all of which is chemically transformed into calcium
carbonate, magnesium carbonate, and other organic matter much is buried in sediments deep
within the earth and about one hundred thousand times as much carbon dioxide is buried
beneath the ocean as in the atmosphere. By un-burying carbon as coal and releasing it into the
atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide humans in a very short debauched fling or greedy
feast have altered the earths atmosphere catastrophically. catastrophe mine cant mine
coterminous mine camouflage mine this mine now distracting the world from the ecological crisis
confessional mine canary mine the small yellow bird detecting gas leaks and oxygen shortage to
be the model for the new function of this mine becoming the canary warning the world of the
environmental disasters looming upon us concave mine contraband mine cautious mine
capillary mine crack mine over one hundred years of frenzied addiction to power and
profiteering and which the world is still hooked clinching mine chinchilla mine and chic mine
capitalist mine not forgetting coalmines turbo charged modern capitalism with all its tentacles of
exploitation and expropriation required for it to thrive then and now canny mine conducive mine
to the exploitation of wage earners by the owners to the means of production with the miners
were neither serfs nor slaves but waged workers with little if no real actual choice by being
deprived of any access to the means of production contemptuous mine with the only way of
subsisting oneself contracted to the mining company with minimal wages and no claim to the
surplus value ones labour generated all of which went to the capitalist owners. Colourlessness
mine capitalism directly undermines its own productivity by its industrially produced biosphere
destruction collateral mine at the latest counting there are at most sixty harvests remaining
before the world’s soils are too exhausted to feed the planet cooperating mine cornucopia mine
class mine each year almost 9 million people are killed by fossil fuels which the capitalist ruling
class consider the price worth paying for continued advantages of fossil capital cosmological
mine conflict-model mine cuisine mine confused mine as one of biggest causes of death in the
history of this mine was language in that migrant workers from so any different parts of the world
could not understand each other and hence accidents happened regularly as a consequence
consequential mine consensual mine cannibal mine crisis mine cacophonous mine the
underground industry of mining was never entirely out of sight and generated bone and nerve
shattering levels of noise under the surface of the earth and the noise above ground by way of
conflicts in the struggle for workers rights crusaders mine hundred if not thousands of horses
and dogs without light or foliage their entire lives calamitous mine contradictory mine its
destructive practice provides the foundations of modern life customised mine customising the
fatal contradictions of capitalism chime mine corpuscular mine conducive mine community mine
crystalline mine below us are a ruinous rubble to a vast alpine range of negative vistas,
decomposing valleys, endless gullies, hollows of darkness contracted mine contra-natural mine
other than the environmental devastation wrought by mining its relationship to colonial and
imperial state building was explicit conjuration mine the destruction the mine visits on the very
communities that make its operations possible having wide-ranging and immense
reverberations evident canny mine correlational mine the migrants who worked as miners here
are precursors and harbingers figures for the immense waves of ecological migration that will
occur this century clairvoyant mine prophesies and sighs caught in the corners of reverie candy
mine of marl dust storms that miners chewed and breathed causing black lung sickness
carnivorous mine careless mine careful mine cathartic mine catatonic mine as the word mine
now becomes the word mind common mine the future must be communal and collective
celebratory mine or the denial of reality as dire minefield cherubim mine in flesh tones
Communist mine cretinous mine it goes without saying why this might be so Cerberus mine is
for the mythological dog guarding the mouth of hell chicanery mine for the trickery and
distracting perpetuated in this mine on life and death proportions chiaroscuro mine chimeric
mine changed mine as the militant power of coal miners on many occasions via strikes and
direct action brought a halt the flow of carbon energy marking the first signs of mass democracy
and universal suffrage in the west comparative mine we need an anti-carbon movement with a
similar determination to get the majority of the population supporting immediate carbon
mitigation cognitive mine clamouring mine cloud mine clown mine clumsy mine collusive mine
cultured mine cybernetic mine escaping capital and its machinery of control and its pervasive
destruction of non economic forms of life cohered mine instead reverse engineer disasters of
history with the pacification to all that resists copious mine contentious mine concomitant mine
Copernican mine crime mine cordial mine climate mine which I hereby call out to all those who
occupy this place now and in the future that all these facilities and spaces, the energy and
resources being expired for culture, for entertainment, for social activities, for art schooling to be
immediately and massively redirected re-calibrated to instead become a ecological think tank,
an ongoing centre running night and day drawing from an international community of climate
scientists, social and ecological activists towards instigating boundless and radical innovation of
thought and activism in formulating and enacting all that is required in ceasing and reversing the
collapse of our ecological systems in ceasing climate change but also in figuring out ways that
the huge delude of migrants that will be forced from the south to the north can be properly
resettled and flourish within the world.
A beautiful performance by a young polish artist Katarzyna Boguslawa Pacura mounted at
FLACC in Genk in 2009 with a starting point being the life of the Polish Communist leader
Edward Gierek (1913-2001) whose communist ideas were cemented while he was working in
the coalmines of Genk the performance consisted of the solitary figure of the artist standing on a
Genk slag heap in the cold repeating over and over again the words of the socialist anthem The
Internationale in three languages. Then as the artist grows increasing tired and as mistakes
occur in her delivery she finally abandons the performance which as she writes intends to
arouse both compassion and despair. No documentation other than a small blurry black and
white photo in the catalogue of the art residency exists and in it the artist states that the work is
about the powerlessness of the individual in society, about the individual swimming against the
current and eventually losing the battle.