When the Ground Becomes Transparent is a lecture-performance work structured into three interconnected moments: a projection, a lecture/reading, and a live performative intervention. The work presents an artistic research by Elena Mazzi focused on extractivism, landscape, and more-than-human agency in the Arctic region, with particular emphasis on Iceland—where negotiations are currently underway regarding the Polar Silk Road trade route—and Sweden, where ongoing mining activities have led to the relocation of the entire town of Kiruna.
The performance begins with the screening of a video that is currently part of the exhibition Agreements of Recognition, followed by an authorial reading that creates a bridge toward the live performance. This second part combines thermal camera recordings overlaid with words and small gestures that emerge from a ritual developed in collaboration with a group of Sámi shamans. At the site where the town’s main church stood for more than a century, the group turned toward the earth and soil with questions about how it feels in relation to human actions—how land is used and extracted for profit, without listening to its voice, which loudly cries out to no longer be mined. The town of Kiruna, together with the local mining company, has in fact decided to relocate the entire city in order to enable further extraction in the near future.
As the final gesture of the exhibition Agreements of Recognition, this performance is situated within a broader curatorial reflection on alliance, ownership, and representation. It expands an inquiry into forms of recognition that extend beyond strictly anthropocentric frameworks, while also further opening up the question of fragile alliances that remain possible.
