By Power Ekroth

< About Greenlight

Since its inception in 2017, the Greenlight Triennial has focused on exploring regional issues concerning nature, industry, climate, and their impact on Grenland‘s scenic landscape. The transformations witnessed in Porsgrunn and Skien, the main nodes of the region, mirror the global shifts in the economies and industries. Over time, Grenland has transitioned from a predominance of oil based traditional heavy industry, to providing large-scale depots for computer servers, and now the area is explored for the potential of mining for minerals and chemical elements required to sustain our modern reliance on electronical tools.  

The region‘s rich mineral history spans several centuries. Søve gruver, situated east of Ulefoss, was once a site for niobium extraction, which also contained uranium and thorium. During World War II, Germany, as the occupying power, expropriated farms to open a niobium quarry for rocket refinement. After the war, the USA utilized the mines for bomber aircraft and rocket development until they were deemed unprofitable in 1961, leading to Norway ceasing operations. In 2004, it was discovered that the mine‘s waste contained highly concentrated uranium and thorium, posing environmental risks that persist today as the so-called Søve-slag has still not been taken care of.  

The recent discovery of Rare Earth Elements (REEs) in the region, crucial for electric cars, wind turbines, and smartphones, has attracted global mining interest. The European Union, concerned about China‘s dominance holding around 90% of mining rights worldwide, is particularly invested in reducing dependency. The prospect of large-scale REE extraction in Grenland presents employment opportunities and the potential for substantial tax revenue for the municipality. However, as with any mining venture, there are inherent challenges. Mining can trigger ecological disruption, soil and water contamination, air pollution and biodiversity loss. Additionally, it produces toxic waste that may cause birth defects and cancer for individuals living near thorium deposits or radioactive waste disposal sites. The toxic waste also needs to be safely deposited for thousands of years, underscoring the complex trade-offs that demand careful consideration.  

Against the backdrop of Grenland‘s industrial landscape and its global challenges, the fourth Greenlight Triennial invites international artists with varied perspectives. Some focus on site-specific work, engaging residents in projects or workshops, while others dig deep into mining practices, legal frameworks, and theoretical aspects. The practices of the invited artists interweave themes of climate, economy, material exploitation, and expropriation, inviting spectators to reflect on what justice in a global perspective might mean today. The exhibition will not in any way try to paint a full portrait of the perplexing questions that arise where consumerism and climate issues intersect; instead, it will open some related themes that the invited artists are interested in and allow for various interpretations for the viewers and hopefully ignite even more questions.  

The title for the triennial The Curse of an Unstoppable Appetite draws inspiration from the Greek myth about the Goddess of agriculture and harvest, Demeter, and the (human) king of Thessaly, Erysichton. Demeter cursed Erysichton to live with an insatiable hunger as a consequence of felling a sacred oak. The more he ate, the hungrier he got. As he used all his resources to find food, including his own daughter whom he sold for slavery, he became destitute and desperate. In the very end, Erysichton had to eat himself bite by bite until nothing remained. His desire for food serves as a poignant metaphor for the unrelenting human appetite for more, and the far-reaching consequences it bears.
 

Extraction,
Expropriation
and Exploitation 

Every day, regardless of whether we live in a cardboard box or a mansion, we engage in basic activities like eating, drinking, sleeping, and of course, pooping. Each seemingly insignificant choice we make – whether it‘s opting for a banana from Honduras for breakfast, indulging in a slightly longer shower, or sending an email – has small yet significant implications. While these choices may appear inconsequential, collectively they could have a substantial impact if everyone followed suit. Furthermore, all our decisions, whether minor or major, reflect moral judgments. Undoubtedly, there is much more we could do on an individual level to mitigate the accelerating pace toward the impending climate collapse warned about by scientists. Nearly ten years ago, in 2015, Geological Survey of Norway (Norges Geologiske Undersøkelse) NGU and the Norwegian Directorate of Mining (Direktoratet for mineralforvaltning) DMF, estimated that each Norwegian individual consume the mind boggling 13 tons of minerals over only one year. ¹ At such a rate of consumption, it seems each member of humanity is cursed by the same spell as Erysichton.  

However, reports indicate that since 1988, approximately 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions have been attributed to just one hundred  corporations, despite some of them claiming to hold eco-friendly worldviews. While some of this can be attributed to ignorance, such as failing to recognize the consequences of activities like deforestation, much of it stems from a systemic belief that the Earth‘s resources are commodities to be owned and extracted without regard for consequences or those afflicted.  

It is notable how the Earth‘s resources, like water or air, are consistently treated as private property, subject to permanent exhaustion as long as they generate profit for the owners, without consideration for future generations. Shouldn’t something that harms the common good be banned? 

In the eighties, many of us were distraught by the documentary photography by Sebasião Salgado from gold mines in Brazil. A quick image-search on the Internet for “mining in Congo” with focus on today’s cobalt mines – one of the key components in our mobile phones – is exploited, it is evident that history is repeated. Child labor, abject poverty, workers buried alive, modern-day slavery and sexual assault are the results in these mines. An article from the Independent in 2023 calls it “a nightmarish world in which billions of people are unwittingly complicit”.2 As long as there is a product with profit to be made, history shows that exploitation follows unless there is a proper legislation that prohibits it by safeguarding individuals and workers’ perspective. When shopping for a new phone, which consumer will actually connect the dots about its relation to slavery, poverty, and assault? In fact, life in our part of the world rather demands that we utilize gadgets that take a heavy human toll. 

While these conditions perhaps might seem very far from Norway, the forced assimilation, displacements, and land dispossession resulting in loss of ancestral territories, attempts of suppression of language, culture and traditions – the regular colonial behavior – is something the indigenous Sami people are still facing and fighting close at hand. A recent example in the region is of course the Storheia and Roan wind farms in Fosen in central Norway that, accordingto Norway‘s supreme court, violated Sami rights under international conventions. Of the many conflicts, the one regarding sea deposition in Repparfjorden for mining waste from the copper mine in Nussir Mountain in Finnmark can also be mentioned. It brings together Sami interests and the environmental movement for actions and protests. Or when Sweden’s government awarded a mining license for an ore in Gállok to the company Beowulf in 2022, after years of protests from the Sami people and environmental activists, scientific experts, and leading international organizations. The company behind the initiative prides itself on making “green energy available safely and affordably in the EU”, while scientists agree that there will be disastrous impacts in the region, and there is stern critique from the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR). And recently, Norway became the first nation to open its continental shelf to commercial deep-sea mineral exploration for an area roughly the size of Italy (280.000 sqm). This, in spite of the opponents that claim that it will irreversibly damage biodiversity and ecosystems, damage the seabed and more damage we cannot possibly foresee.  
 
With existing legislation that prohibits child labor and other safeguarding laws, the mines in the Northern hemisphere will offer a better working environment and better salaries than their counterparts in other parts of the world. The structure of extracting, exploiting and expropriating resources for consumption and profit however remains the same, and the fact that our appetite for the REE is so enormous, means that we undoubtedly always will be dependent on gross exploitation on other parts of the world. The so-called “social license” to operate, which “good working conditions” provide, often becomes a so-called greenwashing argument that creates a myth that we want “Nordic” minerals in our phones or cars, even though it will always be an unlikely scenario since the devices are not produced in the Nordic countries, and these countries do not participate in the market cycle.  
 

The
Capitaloscene 

The term „anthropocene“ has been widely used since the early 2000s to signify the current geological epoch, characterized by significant human impact on the Earth‘s geology and ecosystems. The human activities, such as industrialization, urbanization, and agricultural practices, have become the dominant force shaping the Earth‘s environment, surpassing natural geological processes. However, it can be argued that only specific activities have been driving environmental degradation and social inequality, rather than human activities in general. Humans have inhabited the earth in harmony for a long time, it is only in the recent few hundred years that the resources have been depleted and the climate entered a catastrophic phase. Recently, an alternative to the term “anthropocene” as the era that has caused most harm to the climate has gained traction, and that is the “capitalocene” – damages done by structural capitalistic actions. 

Most of the environmental challenges we face today, such as overconsumption, resource extraction, and pollution, can be traced back to the systemic economic structures and power dynamics that prioritize the maximal accumulation of economic value, making the term “capitoloscene” pertinent. 

The capitalist economy depends on nature but (unfortunately) not on ecological reproduction, as the latter comes with costs that reduce profit. It is evident that capitalism prioritizes short-term profitability, reminiscent of the idiom “to foul in one’s own nest,” disregarding the accumulating long-term costs. This leads to what the philosopher Nancy Fraser calls “Cannibalistic Capitalism,” which also is the title of her latest book in which she describes the state of things thus:
“[…] capitalists appropriate the savings in the form of profit, while passing the environmental costs to those who must live with – and die from – the fallout, including future generations  of human beings. More than a relation to labor, then, capital is also a relation to nature – a cannibalistic, extractive relation, which consumes ever more biophysical wealth in order to pile up ever more “value,” while disavowing ecological “externalities.” […] Like the ouroboros, it eats its own tail.” ²

While governments can intervene to lessen the damages already done, it seems they are always a step behind, “because they leave intact the structural conditions that license private firms to organize production, they do not alter the fundamental fact: the system gives capitalists motive, means, and opportunity to savage the planet.”  
 

Quick Fixes,
Combined Long Fixes,
or Too Late?  

The path towards a sustainable future necessitates reimagining norms. Attempts at reinventing and reshaping what is bad for the climate involve alternatives to our consumption, such as plant-based meat or purchasing carbon offsets when flying. A crucial question this implies, is whether it is indeed possible to consume our way towards a sustainable society? Is it even possible to find a sustainable balance between economic stability, social well-being, and environmental protection? Our global culture has gone from a market economy to a market society. And while economy is a valuable and highly effective tool for organizing productive activity, a large part of humanity lives a life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor. This evokes the well-known quote, often ascribed to Slavoj Žižek or Frederic Jameson, that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”   

The human condition of relentless craving for both more and better, deeply embedded in the consumerism of our time, has reached a critical  peak. Like Erysichton in the myth of Demeter’s curse, it seems we are about to consume the very conditions necessary for life on Earth to survive if we continue our current path. The prevailing economic system today mirrors Demeter’s curse of insatiable appetite. This system of consumerism and commodification relies on coerced labor, land expropriation, and racialized zones used as dumping grounds for used clothes, shoes, or toxic waste.

The widely read Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing The Mushroom at the End of the World – On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (2015) offer a slightly different view on the current capitalist and climate order. She takes her point of departure in the Matsutake mushroom which thrives in disrupted landscapes caused by capitalist activities like deforestation or nuclear disasters, and combines it with the idea that the human capitalist deconstruction of the world as is, will be working collectively with all other life and organisms to create something else, something that can give a shimmer of hope in a post-climate catastrophe world. 

“Making worlds is not limited to humans. We know that beavers reshape streams as they make dams, canals, and lodges; in fact, all organisms make ecological living places, altering earth, air and water. Without the ability to make workable living arrangements, species would die out. In the process each organism changes everyone’s world. Bacteria made our oxygen atmosphere, and plants help maintain it. Plants live on land because fungi made soil by digesting rocks. As these examples suggest, world-making projects can overlap, allowing room for more than one species.” ³

Through this lens resilience of nature and the complex webs of relationships in ecology can emerge during global economic and environmental transformations even after man as species has been extinct.  

The concept of NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) highlights how certain communities, particularly marginalized or racialized ones, unfairly bear the burden of waste disposal and environmental hazards. As the effects of colonialism are still active – with settlers appropriating and expropriating land, often while violently displacing Indigenous peoples and imposing their own culture – it raises legitimate questions about global resilience and the possibility of finding solutions that prioritize justice, equality, and peaceful coexistence sooner rather than later.  

Changes in a global order from any perspective, bureaucratic or from a grass perspective, normally go through the stages of becoming aware of problems, then taking the step of gaining knowledge. After these stages are fulfilled, action can be taken.

The artists that participate in The Curse of an Unstoppable Appetite are presented in a thematic order of awareness, knowledge, and action with experimentation/investigation, hereby emphasizing the exhibition‘s unified identity across multiple venues.