Vladan Joler
New Extractivism

Exhibition
16 March–13 April 2022
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana

Part of Tactics & Practice #12: New Extractivism

In the information age, everything becomes a potential frontier for expansion and extraction – from the depth of the DNA code in every single cell of the human organism to the vast frontiers of human emotions, behaviour and social relations, and nature as a whole. 

At this moment in the 21st century, we are witnessing a new form of extractivism that is well underway: one that reaches into the furthest corners of the biosphere and the deepest layers of human cognitive and affective being. The stack behind contemporary technological systems goes well beyond the multi-layered “technical stack” of data modelling, hardware, servers and networks, as described by Benjamin Bratton in 2015. The full stack reaches much further into capital, labour and nature, and demands an enormous amount of each. The true costs of these systems – social, environmental, economic, and political – remain hidden and may remain so for some time to come. 

It is necessary to move beyond a simple analysis of the relationship between an individual human being, their data and any single technology company to tackle the truly planetary scale of extraction. From the cosmological model of the universe to the world of human emotions interpreted by the slightest muscle movements on the human face, everything becomes subject to quantification. There are deep interconnections between the literal hollowing out of the materials of the earth and the biosphere, and the data capture and monetisation of human practices of communication and sociality. 

New Extractivism by Vladan Joler is a cartographic project that can be understood as a titanic effort to outline these interconnections and to make sense of our contemporary reality. The project can be understood as an “assemblage of concepts and allegories”, drawn from a variety of resources: statistical research and data mining, ancient and contemporary philosophy, media theory and fiction, sociology and economics. Pierced together, these fragments take the form of a map, a manual and a video animation that guide the viewer through the traps, tunnels and slippery corridors of a world-scale infrastructure designed to extract, collect, quantify, analyse and connect all aspects of reality and turn them into capital: new accumulations of wealth and power concentrated in a very thin social layer dominated by a few global mega-corporations.