Ode to Rare Earths
Poem, live performance, soundwork, and video, 2024-ongoing
Ode to Rare Earths is a long poem by Linn Obrestad, written after Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Plutonian Ode, following a generation entranced by the gleaming lure of rare earth elements, from lithium dreams and neodymium fantasies through the promise of connection to the scars of the mined earth. What begins as an ode to technological achievements ends as an elegy with the rare earths not keystones but tombstones.
The work reflects on what happens to our collective values when that which cannot be sold is considered worthless, and what we lose when nature is no longer seen as a living world, but as a depleted resource bank.
Excerpt from Ode to Rare Earths (2026). Voice: Damae Jannette Jongkind and Linn Obrestad.
from Ode to Rare Earths
I.
I saw the best minds of my generation, entranced by the gleaming lure of rare earths, dragging themselves through the virtual sludge at dawn looking for elusive connections.
(...)
II.
Who held vigils by the glow of monitors, for the ones who mined the metals, who soldered and assembled, who coded and created,
(...)
Who understood that within the rare earths lies not just power, but poetry, not just elements, but the essence of our shared humanity.
(...)
III.
Then, saw not the stars in our screens but the scars of the earth, the plundered veins where rare earths bleed,
(...)
In the end, the rare earths not keystones but tombstones, marking the graves of a thousand gadgets and a once green planet.
And the best minds of my generation, entranced by the gleaming lure, now stand watch over a world not lit by stars, but by warning fires.
Linn Obrestad, 2024 (after Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Plutonian Ode). Full poem will be available in print (in the Extractions: Fensfeltet catalogue, 2026).
Iterations
Ode to Rare Earths was written in response to the proposed rare earth extraction at Fensfeltet, Telemark, and has since taken several forms within the Extractions project:
2024: First performed live by Damae Jannette Jongkind at Lønntjenn, Fensfeltet, as part of Extractions (2024) during the Greenlight Triennale, as a site-specific performative event by Obrestad/Dølheim in a forest threatened by mining, with texts stamped into tree stumps throughout the woods.
2024: Presented as wall art and soundwork in Extractions II, Porsgrunn kunstforening. Voice performed by Damae Jannette Jongkind and wall art design by Hilde Iren Dølheim
2025/2026: Developed into a video work, Ode to Rare Earths (a film by Linn Obrestad), with voice performed by Damae Jannette Jongkind and Linn Obrestad.
2026: Performed live by Damae Jannette Jongkind at the AR@K Symposium, Kristiania University College, Oslo.