EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of The Abyss

EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss is a multimedia, multi-venue, cross-border art intervention that will investigate extractive industry in all of its forms (from mining and drilling to the reckless exploitation of water, soil, trees, marine life, and other natural resources). The project will expose and interrogate extraction’s negative social and environmental consequences, from the damage done to people, especially indigenous and disenfranchised communities, to ravaged landscapes and poisoned water to climate change and its many troubling implications. 

A constellation of simultaneous and overlapping exhibits, installations, performances, site-specific work, land art, street art, publications, and cross-media events, EXTRACTION will take place in multiple locations throughout the U.S. and abroad during the Summer of 2021. The project will be de-centered, non-hierarchical, and self-organizing, which means that artists, art venues, curators, and art supporters will participate and collaborate as they see fit, including helping the project expand geographically. Everyone can be both creator and catalyst. At a time of growing despair and paralysis, people from all backgrounds and levels of experience—from the amateur to the virtuoso—can take action. We invite everyone to join us in creating an international art ruckus.

Nothing like EXTRACTION has been attempted before: All art forms, all happening at roughly the same time, with hundreds of artists spread across at least four continents (North and South America, Europe, and Australia). And all addressing a single theme—the suicidal consumption of the planet’s natural resources, which is the most pressing environmental issue of our time, encompassing all others, including climate change.

EXTRACTION: A collective global exclamation: “ENOUGH!” 

Prominent writers, critics, historians, educators, environmentalists, and other experts have been enlisted as advisors, to provide related texts, and to help us forge affiliations with non-art organizations. The Nevada Museum of Art, a national leader in the exhibition, collection, study, and promotion of environmentally related art, has agreed to archive all project documentation.

EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss is a special project of the CODEX Foundation.