Francisco Martínez will be giving a guest lecture for students, researchers and lecturers in the social sciences titled "The Problem Is Bigger than the Hole. Mining Craters in Eastern Estonia". The lecture will take place on 29 September at 15:00.
Please register in advance here
Abstract
This paper deploys ethnographic attention to mining holes. In Eastern Estonia, they are a reminder of a century of modernizations based on the unsustainable extraction and processing of natural resources. Holes materialize a void, a fragment of a greater whole that upsets modern planning. These material voids contain their own forces and stand as a forensic testimony of ecological exhaustion and prolonged socio-technical abuses. They are signs of our own self-destruction and how the climatic consequences of human actions might be beyond our control. The disintegration of recognizable material forms also produces collective risks and questions our political principles.
Today, some of these industries and infrastructures continue to operate, yet demand careful un-design and unmaking. In Estonia, holes are understood as belonging to the past, not the present, whereas the future is presented as flat, liquid and digital. The paradox, however, is that these holes cannot be strictly called as ‘socialist’ and the digital future still relies on Soviet infrastructure. As such, this paper raises questions of responsibility and sustainability, as well as a new awareness of the effects of modernization. If paying attention to how people strive to reconstitute post-broken surroundings we can also learn about public kindness as much as sacrificed areas and modern craters reflect our own arrogances back to us.
About the speaker
Francisco Martínez is an anthropologist dealing with contemporary issues of material culture through ethnographic experiments. In 2018, he was awarded with the Early Career Prize of the European Association of Social Anthropologists. Currently, he works at Tampere University.
Martínez has published several books, including Ethnographic Experiments with Artists, Designers and Boundary Objects (UCL Press, 2021); Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia (UCL Press, 2018); and Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough (Berghahn, 2019). Also, he has curated different exhibitions.
Location
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