Unearthing Disaster I & Unearthing Disaster II by Angela Anderson and Angela Melitopoulos 2 channel HD video installation, 2013, 36min & 2 channel HD video installation, 2015, 26min
In 2013, Angela Anderson and Angela Melitopoulos began documenting the environmental, social and psychological damage inflicted on the region of Halkidiki in Northeastern Greece by the construction of a massive open pit gold mine by the Canadian mining company Eldorado Gold in the pristine forests of the Skouries-Kakkavos mountains. The region’s economy is largely dependent on tourism, farming, beekeeping and fishing, and the construction of this mine violently threatens the abundant, delicate and biodiverse ecosystem of this magnificent natural landscape upon which this economy relies. The existential struggles of the local communities against this catastrophe has unearthed the undemocratic, extra-state strategies of the multinational extraction industry in a moment where the Greek state is forced to implement economic austerity measures, including privatization and so-called fast track investments programs mandated within the EU debt crisis. Today the on-going protests express the voices of citizens whose futures have been suspended and risk being erased for a modern-day colonial, high-tech profit-machine producing unnecessary gold for storage vaults.
In 2015 the new Syriza government vowed to stop the construction of the Skouries mine. However, because of the demands of Greece’s creditors and the pressure from Eldorado Gold, the Greek government has been unable to enact its promises. The protest movements in Halkidiki show that our future is bound to a global political struggle for an ecology that recognizes the interconnectedness of environmental, social, cultural, economic and ethical levels of society.
Unearthing Disaster I (2013, 36min) accompanies local activists on a journey through their once-familiar landscape, transformed in a matter of days by the anti-productive forces of capitalism into something they no longer recognize. Through the course of this journey, the scale of the imminent disaster unfolds through stories about millions of trees cut, about the clean water which is disappearing from the mountain, the sell-out of the region by local politicians, the violent repression of the social movement formed to prevent the destruction of the natural environment by the police and private security, and encounters with workers who violently defend the short-sighted nature of their employment.
Unearthing Disaster I was Produced for the 2013 Berliner Herbstsalon (curated by Shermin Langhoff), Gorki Theater, Berlin (DE).
Unearthing Disaster II (2015) contrasts the molecular, intelligent, rhizomatic networks of plants, trees, streams, and earth with the massive, violent, mechanized destruction of these networks in the name of profit and “development”. It shows the continuing onslaught on the idyllic landscape, which by now has turned into an unrecognisable barren desert. This audio-visual composition questions the value systems and blind spots produced by modernity, and calls for a re-evaluation of economic systems and a critique of capitalist male subjectivity which drives this kind of massive ecological and cultural destruction in the name of profit.
Unearthing Disaster II was Produced for the 5th Thessaloniki Biennale (2015) curated by Katerina Gregos. Thessaloniki (GR)
Unearthing Disaster I (2013) by Angela Anderson & Angela Melitopoulos Two Channel Video Installation, HD, Stereo, 36min
Unearthing Disaster II (2015) by Angela Melitopoulos & Angela Anderson Single Channel Video Installation, 4K, Stereo 26min