From Supply Lines to Resource Ecologies

Abstract

Supply Lines is an international media, art and research platform that investigates contemporary resource ecologies. The project brings artists, architects and photojournalists with substantial research experience on globalization together with theorists working in the areas of geography, art history and cultural theory. It aims to generate new audiovisual media, texts, and cartographies, as well as to debate this material in a series of symposia, exhibitions and publications, all of which will culminate in a web-based platform to be launched in spring 2013. The compilation of short texts and visuals for this special issue expands the notion of natural resources – or ‘commodities’ as traders call them – from hitherto geophysical and economic-industrial contexts toward the aesthetic-philosophical arena. The ambition of this collaborative effort is not to mimic a false mastery of the structure of contemporary resource ecologies but to instigate a rethinking of the interrelatedness of concerns, subjects and matters.