Mineral Drama
Prototyping Lab ♥︎︎︎︎︎
We were lucky to be invited by VR pioneer and performance artist Emma Bexell to take part in Mineral Drama, a small prototyping lab asking big, uncomfortable questions.
Over five days, we used smartphones to investigate smartphones—tracing their minerals back to the ground, mapping the invisible infrastructures behind their glow, and assembling a live montage of extraction, labor, and geopolitical tension. Led by @the_emma_bexell with us, @thornequest and @gorki_gm , the lab unfolded as a porous space: part installation, part live performance, part public rehearsal.
At the core was a persistent question: how do you expose what’s built to remain unseen—especially when the tools you’re using are implicated in the same systems? Working with data, images, and immersive media, we kept running into the same screen. Sometimes it showed us what’s behind it. Sometimes it didn’t. That’s the mineral drama: a staring contest between the smoothness of tech and the roughness of matter.
And then came the news. Northvolt, Sweden’s green battery giant, had filed for what would become the country’s biggest bankruptcy in modern history. A collapse that quietly confirmed the scale and stakes of what we were tracing—slow violence, wrapped in the promise of sustainability.
The lab culminated in enjoy the unknovvvn, a gathering of artists, performers, and curious strangers inside an old shop on Claesgatan in Malmö. There were installations, mineral deals, soft spells, and lots of talk. Café Bambino, the podcast collective, had just launched their own “socialist” cryptocurrency: BAMBINO coin.
We were lucky to be invited by VR pioneer and performance artist Emma Bexell to take part in Mineral Drama, a small prototyping lab asking big, uncomfortable questions.
Over five days, we used smartphones to investigate smartphones—tracing their minerals back to the ground, mapping the invisible infrastructures behind their glow, and assembling a live montage of extraction, labor, and geopolitical tension. Led by @the_emma_bexell with us, @thornequest and @gorki_gm , the lab unfolded as a porous space: part installation, part live performance, part public rehearsal.
At the core was a persistent question: how do you expose what’s built to remain unseen—especially when the tools you’re using are implicated in the same systems? Working with data, images, and immersive media, we kept running into the same screen. Sometimes it showed us what’s behind it. Sometimes it didn’t. That’s the mineral drama: a staring contest between the smoothness of tech and the roughness of matter.
And then came the news. Northvolt, Sweden’s green battery giant, had filed for what would become the country’s biggest bankruptcy in modern history. A collapse that quietly confirmed the scale and stakes of what we were tracing—slow violence, wrapped in the promise of sustainability.
The lab culminated in enjoy the unknovvvn, a gathering of artists, performers, and curious strangers inside an old shop on Claesgatan in Malmö. There were installations, mineral deals, soft spells, and lots of talk. Café Bambino, the podcast collective, had just launched their own “socialist” cryptocurrency: BAMBINO coin.
CREDITS
a project by Me AndOther Me / Cenk Güzelis & Anna Pompermaier
a project by Me AndOther Me / Cenk Güzelis & Anna Pompermaier