Blood of the Earth – Stories of Iron in (extr)activist times
The Blood of the Earth Leporello is an interactive exhibition that was designed for and exhibited at the Himmelsberga Museum of the Future. It explores extractivist and activist stories in Sweden surrounding the metal Iron. The work welcomes all stories, highlights marginalized voices and tries to mirror the actions of the Swedish state towards the indigenous Sámi people. The intended outcome is shaped in an accordion fold artist-book that is consciously voluminous and hard to handle, mirroring the topic. It combines self-made pictures, poems, paint out of self-harvested iron oxide, stamps and letterpress, with the raw metal that is laying around it. Everything is handmade or selected from my field trip from Kiruna. Which gives a haptic approachable feeling to this wicked problem. The exhibition aims to raise dialogue and awareness about the complexities of iron ore mining and means to leave you with more questions.
“The way the green energy transition is approached is not sustainable – the western society is maintaining their level of comfort just with another more ‘sustainable’ energy source exploiting resources and indigenous communities without questioning the capitalistic system.” (Schmidt and Svensson 2023)
The project focuses on Sweden and in specific on Kiruna, where the biggest iron ore underground mine of the world is situated. It basically rules the town and heavily influences the local communities in positive and negative ways. Especially the expansion of the mine is controversial. The Per Geijer deposit is rich of rare earth metals, which Europe would need for the green energy transition in Europe, to be more independent from China and Russia. But this landscape is already heavily exploited and would cut off the reindeer migration path of the local Sámi villages.
“I do not see destroying more land and water, destroying our culture and our way of life as part of a so-called green transition.”- Karin Kvafort Nila (Schmidt and Svensson 2023)
How green is the energy really, if it takes away the land and possibility to enact the culture of the local indigenous people?
My work originated from my previous project Stories Of The Streams around Trummen. There I encountered iron oxide, through processing the sludge of a rusting stream. Which I used as a colour in my work. It intrigued me to find out that in Småland it has been a long-standing practice to harvest lake ore (iron) from the bottom of lakes wetlands. I went to Huseby Bruk a cast iron production site in Småland that is frozen in time and learned about how iron production shaped the society back in the 1600s.
My other fieldtrip led me to Kiruna with the incentive to explore the mine’s impact on the local communities. It opened my eyes, that the mine is the mother of the town and that most people including Sámi work there.
Have you ever stood at the edge of an open pit mine?
I’m standing at the edge of the Svappavaara open pit mine
on satellite it looks like a small hole,
but I should have known better.
Standing here, it’s massive.
You see on the ground, tiny cars, tiny excavators, tiny humans, a little house
Around it is Forest, hills, nature.
It feels like I’m not allowed to be here.
Feels like I’m looking at something forbidden.
It feels forbidden.
It feels like a crime.
And this kind of mine,
this kind of wound, this hole in the earth,
will be done in Vittangi
Between two beautiful rivers
That are a lifeline
for digging up graphite
for lithium-ion batteries for electric cars,
so more people can consume under the green cloak of sustainability.
How would our world look like if we don’t mine?
If we don’t extract?
If we live in reciprocity,
if we give back, if we finally start to give back?
How would this world look like?
I would like to live there.
You too?
I will keep fighting till we are there!
The exhibition is built up in three parts. The first one is informing and connecting with the head and facts. The second is interacting with your senses with the iron. The third is seeing and feeling the personal interconnection. I invite people to read a poem and give them questions to ponder about, as well as invite them to write their own. The design is consciously bulky and haptic to create a tangible feeling to such a complexity. I want them to leave with a feeling of interconnectedness to iron and awareness of what it entails to mine and extract. I want to politicise. I hope my exhibition can make a tiny contribution against colonial communities and the capitalist system – for a better life for all.
“The exhibition is digging and mining up uncomfortable truth, often unheard voices and puts them on the table to discuss. It is a conversation starter and especially the questions touch me and make me reflect. It is done in a way that I don’t feel attacked, and all voices and truth are valued. Still, it provokes.” – Maria Björn
Schmidt, Maria, and Maria Svensson. 2023. ‘Unveiling Contradictions: The Green Energy Transition and Sámi Indigenous Rights in the Per Geijer Expansion, Kiruna, Sweden’. Malmö University. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1777672/FULLTEXT01.pdf.
