On the final afternoon of the festival ›Shifting Grounds‹, we speak back to the heap – a toxic legacy of past mining activities and an ecological niche – in the frame of the experimental conversation format ›Chewing on the crumbs of extraction - A metabolic journey‹.

The experimental conversation format will begin with an input by anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, author of ›The Mushroom at the End of the World‹. In an online contribution, she will speak about the ambivalences of mangrove restoration. Through subsequent conversations and artistic interventions – sound recordings from the heap, biographical storytelling and chewing together – the foyer of PACT Zollverein becomes a space of possibility. We are tracing the ghosts of past and future industrial activity and connecting the Ruhr area with regions where mining is today more active than ever – for example in Nova Lima, a mining community in Minas Gerais, Brazil. 

We all come from places that are shaped by extractive processes in very unequal ways, yet sharing many commonalities. What can we learn from minerals, trees, birds and beetles? What regenerative potential lies in the material cycles of the heap? And how can we collectively develop insurgent strategies for a future 'life in the ruins' of a fragile planet?

With Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Iazmin Al-Qaisi, Maria Cecília Rocha and Carlina Rossée.

With the kind support of Max-Planck-Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena.