Panel discussion #3 Fossil Gas is Not Clean

online event, English language

GUESTS: Christopher Basaldú, Rachel O’Reilly, Esteban Servat, MODERATION: Sumugan Sivanesan (Black Earth Kollektiv)

Christopher Basaldú, PhD, is Esto’k Gna (human being), a member of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. Dr. Basaldú grew up in Brownsville and in Corpus Christi, Texas, before earning the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the Study of Religion from Harvard University. He then earned the degrees of Master of Arts in American Indian Studies and the Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology, both from the University of Arizona. Dr. Basaldú currently lives in Brownsville and proudly stands with his tribe and community to protect sacred sites, sacred homelands, and sacred waters.

Rachel O’Reilly is an artist, writer, independent researcher, curator, and educator born in Gladstone, Queensland, Australia on the unceded lands of the Gooreng-Gooreng people. Her work explores relationships between art and situated cultural practices, media philosophy, and political economy. In the last decade she has focused increasingly on infrastructures of art and energy, questions of law and governance, and urgencies of planetary survivance. Her artistic research project The Gas Imaginary (2013-2019) used poetry, animation, installation, documentary filmmaking, and public lectures to explain the racial and ecocidal logic of ‘unconventional’ fossil gas fracking expansions in settler colonial space. O’Reilly teaches at the Dutch Art Institute and is a PhD researcher at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, London.

Esteban Servat is a scientist and exiled environmental activist from Argentina. After a decade of working in the Silicon Valley, he returned to Argentina to build a self-sustaining community. When the government brought fracking into the region, which is part of Vaca Muerta, Servat became an activist. As a co-creator of EcoLeaks and instigator of a massive anti fracking movement, Servat became the target of government attacks and was ultimately forced to leave the country. From Europe, he has continued his activism, building networks to connect environmental groups across continents and contexts. He has initiated and helped to build movements and networks such as Shale Must Fall and the Global Coastline Rebellion.

Sumugan Sivanesan is an anti-disciplinary artist, researcher, and writer. Often working collaboratively, his interests include political ontology, activist media, minority politics and more-than-human rights. He is currently developing fugitive radio as a platform for migrant, anticolonial and queer issues and music in Helsinki and beyond. In Berlin, he is part of Black Earth, a collective addressing the interacting issues of racism, gender, colonialism and climate justice. Sumugan earned a doctorate from the Transforming Cultures research centre at the University of Technology Sydney (2014) and was a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for English and American Studies (Cultural Studies), University of Potsdam (2016) to research Urban Eco-politics of the Anthropocene.

This event is part of the project Fossil Experience by Prater Galerie. More information about the exhibition and program can be found here.

Fossil Experience is supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds, LOTTO-Stiftung Berlin, and the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, kindly supported by Förderband Kulturinitiative Berlin and Schankhalle Pfefferberg.

Prater Galerie