Article:
Mediengeologisches Sorgen. Mit Otobong Nkanga gegen Ökolonialität

Author(s): Gramlich, Noam

Abstract

This article addresses the aesthetic and material-semiotic practices of care in the work of artist Otobong Nkanga. The aim is to highlight media-geological connections between racial ecologies and media infrastructures. Examining Nkanga’s work In Pursuit of Bling (2014), the article interrogates European media infrastructures in relation to the processes of extracting copper upon which they are based. This material is connected to the history(s) and present of a Namibian mine in Tsumeb that was illegitimately appropriated during the German empire. Though critical analyses of the term raw material, the article traces ecoloniality not only on an extractivist level but also on an epistemic one, as well. It explicates care as a moment of tension: as a colonial-paternalistic control system of care, as the material provision of infrastructure, and as an anticolonial concern for ecological ruins and lost narratives.

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BibTex
Gramlich, Noam: Mediengeologisches Sorgen. Mit Otobong Nkanga gegen Ökolonialität. In: Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft, Jg. 13 (2021), Nr. 1, S. 65-76. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/15776.
@ARTICLE{Gramlich2021,
 author = {Gramlich, Noam},
 title = {Mediengeologisches Sorgen. Mit Otobong Nkanga gegen Ökolonialität},
 year = 2021,
 doi = "\url{http://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/15776}",
 volume = 13,
 address = {Bielefeld},
 journal = {Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft},
 number = 1,
 pages = {65--76},
}
Keywords
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