The EU wants to reduce European dependence on the import of rare earths and critical raw minerals. But instead of moving away from the logic of extraction intrinsic to the climate emergency, it aims at fast-tracking the growth and exploitation of new mining sites in Europe and its international map of influence. A new cartography of colonial extraction already marks the “energy transition,” on which the future of Europe’s political power depends.

This two-day workshop focuses creative and critical attention on the agricultural corridor linking North Africa to Spain and The Netherlands. The program will involve scholars, artists, and activists from across the agricultural nexus.

Workshop participants will explore how water, labor, and phosphorus (a key chemical for farming) are all connected. What role do these ecologies play in our economy, and how does capitalism rely on them? The participants will also try to understand where things go wrong and where people can work together in dealing with these important resources.

The workshop consists of film screenings, talks, a mixed media installation at Framer Framed, and a field trip to the agribulk terminal of the Port of Amsterdam. Students at the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA) Field Theory course are invited as participants and interlocutors, and the program is open to all members of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), as well as the wider public. 

Keep an eye on our events page for detailed info and the sign-up link.

Jeff Diamanti is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities (Cultural Analysis & Philosophy) at the UvA. His first book, Climate and Capital in the Age of Petroleum: Locating Terminal Landscapes (Bloomsbury 2021) tracks the political and media ecology of fossil fuels across the extractive and logistical spaces that connect remote territories like Greenland to the economies of North America and Western Europe. His new research, Bloom Ecologies, follows the mining of phosphorous in the occupied Western Sahara to the aquatic currents forcing algal bloom and hypoxic milieu all over the planet.

Rebeca Ibáñez Martín is an anthropologist with expertise in environmental anthropology and social studies of science. She is a senior researcher at the KNAW and at UvA’s Anthropology department. She is the principal investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant "VITALGREENHOUSE", where she analyzes sustainability transitions in European horticultural greenhouses. In her research, she focuses on mobility, particularly the circulation of non-humans as collaborators or pests, and technological interventions and innovations.