What is the relationship between extractivism and visuality? What can reflecting on this relationship tell us about the politics of extractivism especially in colonial contexts whose coloniality has remained underrecognised?

Join us for a special launch event as we explore these questions in light of geographer Eray Çaylı’s new book Earthmoving: Extractivism, War, and Visuality in Northern Kurdistan (University of Texas Press, 2025). Derived from Çaylı’s years-long work in Northern Kurdistan, Earthmoving focuses on the 2010s, a decade that began with peace talks between Turkey and the Kurdish liberation movement but ended with war. The decade saw extractivism intensify in the region and images of its harm proliferate across art and media. In the book, together with contemporary artists, Çaylı shows how images challenge extractivism.

Architect and architecture scholar Nishat Awan, sociologist Yeşim Yaprak Yıldız and anthropologist and geographer Austin Zeiderman will be in conversation with the author. Moderated by curator Siegrun Bahar Salmanian.