A FUTURE PARADOX
Project Type: 2020 Warming Competition
Date: 2020
Project Team: Kelsey Pierson + Gabriella Herbosa
This response to WARMING began with an interest in mining’s symbolism of wealth and hope for their corresponding communities, once described as the “richest hills on earth”. Discoveries of valuable minerals including copper, silver, oil, and coal have been a foundation of the mining site’s prosperity. Prosperity was imminent once communities could reap the benefits of these underground treasures. However, damage to the physical environment has caused unsafe environments for miners and health concerns for the adjacent population. Mining scars are left across the landscape in the forms of stripped hillsides, toxic discharge pits, eerily glowing water supplies, precarious underground tunnels, bare reefs, and abandoned infrastructure. These locations have witnessed the growth of wealth and hope, only to be left with painful and conspicuous reminders of a disappointing past and an even more bleak present.
A Future Paradox is a speculative narrative that responds to the environmental damage caused by mining various minerals. It is a proposal that addresses the detrimental role of mining to an exacerbated warming climate through the process of collage. This medium illustrates the condemned past while at the same time providing sustainable alternatives as a reconciliation of mining sites and their direct population. Mining site explorations throughout the world serve as case studies, imagining how different environments can perceive the future of mining communities. Copper mining in Butte, Montana (1); silver mining in Potosi, Bolivia (2); offshore oil mining in the Bay of Bengal (3), and gold mining in Siberia, Russia (4) are highlighted sites demonstrating mining’s impact on their human and ecological populations. Each collage rewrites mining’s condemned paradox of wealth in spite of health, to a narrative of health driving wealth. This future paradox allows health and wealth to exist at once by understanding past intentions to redefine energy practices and community welfare.
Site research, infrastructure revitalization, holistic education, and community engagement can work together to rewrite the narrative of mining sites. By harmonizing past expectations with future hopes, we can see a world where these initial points of contention become the “richest hills on earth” once more.
Date: 2020
Project Team: Kelsey Pierson + Gabriella Herbosa
This response to WARMING began with an interest in mining’s symbolism of wealth and hope for their corresponding communities, once described as the “richest hills on earth”. Discoveries of valuable minerals including copper, silver, oil, and coal have been a foundation of the mining site’s prosperity. Prosperity was imminent once communities could reap the benefits of these underground treasures. However, damage to the physical environment has caused unsafe environments for miners and health concerns for the adjacent population. Mining scars are left across the landscape in the forms of stripped hillsides, toxic discharge pits, eerily glowing water supplies, precarious underground tunnels, bare reefs, and abandoned infrastructure. These locations have witnessed the growth of wealth and hope, only to be left with painful and conspicuous reminders of a disappointing past and an even more bleak present.
A Future Paradox is a speculative narrative that responds to the environmental damage caused by mining various minerals. It is a proposal that addresses the detrimental role of mining to an exacerbated warming climate through the process of collage. This medium illustrates the condemned past while at the same time providing sustainable alternatives as a reconciliation of mining sites and their direct population. Mining site explorations throughout the world serve as case studies, imagining how different environments can perceive the future of mining communities. Copper mining in Butte, Montana (1); silver mining in Potosi, Bolivia (2); offshore oil mining in the Bay of Bengal (3), and gold mining in Siberia, Russia (4) are highlighted sites demonstrating mining’s impact on their human and ecological populations. Each collage rewrites mining’s condemned paradox of wealth in spite of health, to a narrative of health driving wealth. This future paradox allows health and wealth to exist at once by understanding past intentions to redefine energy practices and community welfare.
Site research, infrastructure revitalization, holistic education, and community engagement can work together to rewrite the narrative of mining sites. By harmonizing past expectations with future hopes, we can see a world where these initial points of contention become the “richest hills on earth” once more.