EXTRAXTIONS
Porsgrunn Kunstforening, Norway (2024)
Exhibition by Linn Obrestad & Hilde Iren Dølheim
Extractions (2024) combined sculptural installations, video works, sound, and text-based pieces developed through fieldwork in forest landscapes in Telemark, where areas are currently being assessed for mineral extraction related to the Fen Complex.
The exhibition approached extraction as a layered condition, and natural materials collected from the forest areas were combined with industrial elements, magnets, metal structures, sound, and moving images, creating a space where vulnerability and force, growth and intervention, coexist.
The works traced connections between underground systems and visible infrastructures, human dependence on technology, and the quieter forms of erosion that follow when land is reframed as a resource.
Works in the exhibition
Quotation Archive, collection of excerpts spanning ecology, philosophy, science, and politics
Root Installation, root mounted in a steel frame with neodymium magnets
Roots in Steel Frame
Reeds from a Pond
Copper Flowers and Roots on Wooden Base (with underlying video)
Wooden Fragment with Copper Roots
Ode to Rare Earths, text and sound work
If the Word for World Is Forest, Polaroid series
Disturbance, video installation with mechanical whip
Subtext, video work with short textual elements
All natural materials in the exhibition were collected from a forest area in Helgen, where nearly 4,000 hectares are currently being assessed for waste disposal and processing facilities related to rare earth mining at the Fen Complex.