Ore

experimental film, installation, photographs, 2018

ORE is an experimental film that reveals how humanity appropriates the planet, focusing on vast mining sites such as the Erzberg iron-ore mountain in Styria and a sulphur mine in Japan’s Hakone region. Inspired by Timothy Morton’s concept of “hyperobjects”* — entities so vast in space and time that they elude ordinary thought — the film treats mining itself as a hyperobject. Because the ecological and bodily effects of mineral extraction remain only partially understood, ORE explores the entangled relationships among minerals, mining workers, landscapes, noise, rare earths, economic systems, consumer pressures, territorial and technological desires, and the digital products that rely on these resources. In doing so, the film makes the complex interplay between nature, technology, and society palpable while challenging the limits of conventional imagination.

* see Timothy Morton - Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World, University of Minnesota Press, 2013