"Pleasure Prospects" 2019
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New Mineral Collective
Artist Collective formed 2012: Tanya Busse (she/her) born 1982, Moncton, Mi’kmaq Territory, Canada; and Emilija Škarnulytė (she/her), born 1987, Vilnius, Lithuania. Live and work in Romsa/Tromsø in northern Sápmi/Norway.
"Pleasure Prospects" 2019
single-channel colour video with sound, 4k
16:30 minutes
Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art, courtesy of the artists, Romsa/Tromsø.
Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė of New Mineral Collective describe their work as “the largest and least productive mining company in the world”. Their practice centres on extractive industries and their surrounding relationships to create new political and geographic landscapes. Their goal is to prospect alternative forces of love, pleasure, desire, poetry, and passive resistance to environmental, political and social destruction.
Pleasure Prospects is a video work that looks through the strata of extraction, topographically exploring the earth and mining enterprises. Questioning the reliance and relationships these industries have to the earth’s resources, the film outlines ‘how to extract meaning, not material’. Charting the process of acquiring prospecting licences, the Collective transform this relationship into ‘counter-prospecting’ for alternate values, and to actively resist non-replenishable resource consumption. Imagining an alternate future, the video shows people guiding each other through healing rituals. The performers move in an unconfined rhythm and consonance with their bodies and each other, while set against the decay of the built environment. Pleasure Prospects situates radical acts of care and healing as resistance to neoliberal growth, which is achieved at the expense of the earth.
Credits & Acknowledgments:
Directors: Tanya Busse & Emilija Škarnulytė
Editing: Matthew Doyle
DOP: Polina Teif, Colin Medley
Drone Operator: Vlad Lunin
Second Drone DOP: Shawn Beringer
Sound: Jokūbas Čižikas
Field Recorders: Alex Williams, Deirdre Morrison
Exhibition Design: Linas Lapinskas, Vsevolodas Kovalevskis
Special thanks:
Performers: Lauren Runions, Jamee Valens, Oriah Wiersma, Nyda Kwasowsky, Maurícia Barreira Neves, Joana Castro, Ashes Perez, Emily Law, Kiera Boult
Synchronised Swimmers: Olympium Synchro Club and Cosette Le Blanc Hydrotherapy performed by: Alison Creba
Watersuit and head cap: compliments of In Sync
Performance artist: Tess Martens
Swimsuit design & performance consultant: Caroline St. Laurent
Artist assistant: Elizabeth Sullivan
Acupuncturist: Laura Kaufer
Assistant I: Layne Hinton
Assistant II: Lucia Stevens
Costume Design: Lee Dekel
Costumes: 100% Silk
University of Toronto Lassonde Institute of Mining
Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, Canada.