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Exhibitions

Episode 7

In our last episode, we considered how institutions such as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) are managing the extinction of the bluefin tuna, which is emptying the seas and leading to the forced displacement of fisherfolk, namely, that are traditionally living from the wildlife in those seas. In this episode we consider how this resource depletion affects those communities, as well as the wider infrastructures of extraction which they are a part of. Together with Dr Nishat Awan, who leads the research project Topological Atlas at TU Delft. Topological Atlas produces visual counter-geographies that combine digital mapping and storytelling techniques with a participative approach, attending to those who are at the margins of traditional geopolitical inquiry.

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Episode 6

In the previous episode, we considered legacies of pelagic extraction from the perspective of artisanal fisherfolk, and discussed how to begin unthinking and unknowing these extractive ontologies. In the following, with Dr Jennifer Telesca we focus on the role of institutions tasked with conservation management in 'managing extinction'. We discuss how marine policymaking has contributed to the accelerating extraction of maritime life. In her recent article, 'Fishing for the Anthropocene: Time in Ocean Governance', she denounces the role of managerial capitalism, armed with bleak yet powerful persuasive tools such as visual charts, scientific models and statistical formulas, which together "plan, measure and quantify time as an exercise of power at sea". In this vein, our discussion will focus on the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), and how it has managed and administered the extinction of the blue fin tuna, which is the focus of her recent book, Red Gold. We also consider modes of decentrering the legal spaciest policies by redefining value systems based on multispecies respect and environmental justice.

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Episode 5

Previous episodes have focused on certain measures of conservation in fisheries, such as Maximum Sustainable Yield, which were historically put in place to protect domestic industries rather than fish populations. These measures often reinforce legacies of pelagic extraction. This episode focuses on the situation from the perspective of fisherfolk. Their testimonies are in conversation with Dr Epifania Amoo-Adare, an artist, ‘renegade’ architect, pedagogue and researcher based in Accra who is currently engaged in what she describes as the “art of unthinking”. In this episode, we join Amoo-Adare in the art of unthinking, where the very idea of ‘development’ is questioned in a discussion of Ghana’s depleting marine landscape, the othering of artisanal fishermen, fish mothers and their fishmongers, which ends by the outlining of fundamentally non-extractive alternative modes of coexistence.

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Episode 4

This episode focuses on modes of maritime extraction that continue legacies of colonial rule. In discussion with Liam Campling we explore some of the legal and economic infrastructures that support and perpetuate fishery extraction, such as Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), and Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY), based on his recent book, co-authored with Alejandro Colás, Capitalism and the Sea: the Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World. As the EU has the third largest fishing fleet in the world, the majority of which belongs to companies registered in Spain, fisheries become a paramount resource to consider. Like most states, the EU approaches marine natural resources using mechanistic lenses such as input/output paradigms. This is exemplified in the usage of the word ‘stock’ to designate populations of fish. Understanding oceanic spaces as resources that can be measured like an inventory exists within a form of marine management which has facilitated the industrial, long-haul fishing responsible for much of today’s overfishing. This episode focuses on the specific tools and agreements that enable overfishing, bringing its logic to the Global South in a gold-rush for resources.

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Episode 3

After developing an understanding of the Berlin Conference’s implications, of the concept of Eurafrica, and of how the European Integration project was truly founded in the previous episodes, we wanted to understand more about how these structures have continued, and how they have been transformed and institutionalised in contemporary international relations. One fundamental example of this is the Franc of the Financial Community of Africa (CFA). We invited Dr Ndongo Samba Sylla, a development economist at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Dakar (Senegal), who recently co-authored Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story with Fanny Pigeaud (published by Pluto Press), onto the podcast to discuss these issues with us.

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Episode 2

In this episode we consider how the very foundation of the EU was predicated upon an extractivist model. In their book Eurafrica, the Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism, Prof Peo Hansen and Prof Stefan Jonsson, debunk the theory of what they refer to as the Immaculate Conception of the European Union formation, one where a group of benevolent Western European leaders chose to set aside nationalist rivalries to unite for peace, democracy and freedom, to one where the cooperation of European states to no little extent was predicated upon the exploitation of African resources, which could be better accomplished through a coordinated effort.

This institutionalised the colonies' role as purveyors of raw materials. Hansen and Jonsson have summarised it as follows: “Eurafrica is able to make sense both of the political and discursive discontinuity and the infrastructural or economic continuity between the late colonial period and an emerging Neo-colonial globalisation.” This is supported by archival research, foremost into the inter-governmental negotiations that led up to the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, and numerous other sources. As one analyst put it in 1957: “It is in Africa that Europe will be made”.

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Episode 1

Through sorcery and extraction, the EURO–VISION series begins with Prof Adekeye Adebajo, Director of the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation at the University of Johannesburg. The conversation focuses on the history of extraction between the European and the African continent, which has laid the groundwork for the
Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) are resources deemed economically and strategically important for the economy of a sovereign state, and have a high-risk associated with their supply. Criticality is not derived from scarcity, but rather through the covalence between significant economic importance, high-supply risk and the lack of feasible substitutes. In the EU, this has been overseen by the Critical Raw Material Initiative (CRMI) established …
Critical Raw Materials
Initiative to take shape. A key event in this genealogy is the Berlin Conference (1884-85), led by the Chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck, during which the heads of fourteen states, none of which were from Africa, assembled to discuss the partition of the African continent. This meeting which occurred a century and a half ago continues to shape Africa's borders today, as well as its governance, its economy, its international relations, and the extraction of its materials. The latter of which is often either towards Europe, or to benefit European-owned companies. Based on Adebajo’s monograph, 'The Curse of Berlin: Africa after the Cold War', we delve into the extent of von Bismarck's legacy and the significance of this event in contemporary international affairs.

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About the EURO—VISION podcast series

A series of weekly podcasts featuring conversations with activists, scholars, fisherpeople and artists, hosted by
FRAUD (Audrey Samson and Françîcco Gayardo) is an artist duo whose work has been exhibited internationally. Their artistic and …
FRAUD
, around the politics of extraction, migration and international agreements that are affecting communities and ecologies on a global scale and that perpetuate European colonial legacies.

Speakers include:
Prof. Adekeye Adebajo, Director of the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Dr Epifania Akosua Amoo-Adare, artist, architect and independent scholar based in Accra, Ghana.
Dr Nishat Awan, Topological Atlas, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.
Prof. Liam Campling, International Business and Development, School of Business and Management of Queen Mary, University of London, England.
Collectif des Communautés Subsahariennes au Maroc (Subsaharan Community Collective, Rabat, Morocco.
Ms Micheline Dion Somplehi (vice-president of the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives in Ivory Coast (FENACOPECI), and head of the Women’s Programme of the African Confederation of Artisanal Fisheries Professional Organisations (CAOP), based in Abobodoumé, Ivory Coast.
Dr James Esson, Reader in Human Geography, Loughborough University, England.
Ms Béatrice Gorez, coordinator for the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Agreements, based in Brussels, Belgium.
Prof. Peo Hansen, Political Science, Division of Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University, Sweden.
Prof. Stefan Jonsson, Ethnic Studies, Division of Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University, Sweden.
Mr Nii Ayitey Sackey, traditional fisherperson from the Greater Accra area, Ghana.
Mr Solomon Sampa, traditional fisherperson from the Greater Accra area, Ghana.
Dr Ndongo Samba Sylla, development economist at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Dakar, Sénégal.

Original music by Frédéric Laurier
Sound editing by Kitty Turner

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EURO—VISION: the booklet

The EURO—VISION booklet critically charts some of the affective modes of power entangled in surveillance technology and migrant flows. By collating a small portion of EU funded border surveillance technology it explores the extractivist gaze of the EU’s migration policy and its inscriptive operations on territories and bodies at its peripheries.

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Partnerships; or how to reap without sowing

The controversial evaluation report of the EU-Morocco Fisheries Partnership Agreement is a damning cost-benefit analysis showing that it is cheaper to pay Spanish fishing fleets to remain at port, than to pay for accessing Moroccan fish stocks. In addition, this report is classified, thus only accessible to members of the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee under extremely restrictive circumstances: in the French language only, in a room accessible to one person at a time, without phone, translator, assistant or notepad.

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Geographies of Toxic Wellness

Within a wider enquiry into the EU's
Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) are resources deemed economically and strategically important for the economy of a sovereign state, and have a high-risk associated with their supply. Criticality is not derived from scarcity, but rather through the covalence between significant economic importance, high-supply risk and the lack of feasible substitutes. In the EU, this has been overseen by the Critical Raw Material Initiative (CRMI) established …
Critical Raw Materials
Initiative, this article explores tourism as a crucible for extraction, and considering how the medicalisation and commodification of the coastline are ushering in a form of toxic wellness. It traces genealogies of circulation through sanitariums, Ling exercises, spas and wellness through the Halland coastline, a geography which wavers between the monstrous and the desirable.

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Carbon Leakage

Carbon leakage is a phenomenon which stems from the financialisation of carbon. Carbon has become a unit of value and measurement.
Forests, footprints, industry pollution, credits, emissions, animate and non-animate alike are measured and valued in terms of carbon, and their potential to sequester it. In the wake of climate catastrophe, carbon as currency becomes a tool that capitalises in the present upon the uncertainty of the future.
Following this logic, carbon has been introduced as commodity on the futures market, to be traded, exchanged, and subjected to market speculation, leading to heavy industry polluters incurring windfall profits.
This text was included in Jesper Eriksson's 'COAL: POST FUEL', for the Swedish Pavilion presented at the London Design Biennale 2018.

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Immutability, Management, Trees

The following presents an asynchronous and tangential exchange between Chris Lee and
FRAUD (Audrey Samson and Françîcco Gayardo) is an artist duo whose work has been exhibited internationally. Their artistic and …
FRAUD
as they shared acollection of artefacts as ameans to explore the resonances of their interests. Their conversation reflects on how documents - a banal artefact - are entangled with statecraft and colonialism, and asks what if documents as such would not centre around logos, websites, books and apps but design education, exeplified by things like money, passports, property deeds, birth certificates and so on?

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COMMERCIAL EXTINCTION: The Exhaustion of Exhaustion

In this article for the Empire Shop Remains,
FRAUD (Audrey Samson and Françîcco Gayardo) is an artist duo whose work has been exhibited internationally. Their artistic and …
FRAUD
discusses Commercial extinction, as it entails death from economic, social, or cultural realms but not from the total—and virtual—inventory of marine life. That is to say, a community of organisms remain, just not enough to catch commercially. Commercial extinction is a form a “slow death” in Lauren Berlant’s terms. Such modes of extinction point towards the relative and destructive nature of capital. While commercial extinction reduces fishing grounds to mere objects of exploitation, it also shows the very exhaustion of exhaustion. It often paradoxically affords the survival of a species.

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