A Situated Media Geolog. The Coloniality of the Copper Mine in Tsumeb.

• Applicant: Noam Gramlich
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 537658132

The dissertation “A Situated Media Geology. The Coloniality of the Copper Mine in Tsumeb” in the field of media studies is dedicated to reappraising the colonial history of the mine in Tsumeb, Namibia. Postcolonial and feminist approaches are used interdisciplinary to make visible the ecological, social, Following research on infrastructures and geology of electric media (cf. Parikka 2015), it is argued that the metaphors of spacelessness and immateriality depend on questions of situatedness (cf. Haraway 1988; Tsing 2015; Mignolo 2012). Therefore, I complement perspectives of media studies on materiality with a postcolonial approach, focusing on its relationship to racialization, gendering, and coloniality. The case study is the copper mine in Tsumeb (Namibia), which was expropriated from San, Damara, and Aawambo people during the German colonization. In light of the gaps in the colonial archive, the used material is participant observation, interviews, artistic works, photographs, archival material, and environmental science reports. Based on the assumption of an extractivist gaze that is still present today (cf. Azoulay 2019), in the first chapter I examine photography as crucial to the cultural production of raw materials. The second chapter is dedicated to theories of racism and environmental issues in relation to landscapes of (former) copper mining in Tsumeb. In the third chapter, I work through oral history interviews with Aawambo blacksmiths and argue that indigenous African copper economies are also anti-colonial economies. In the three chapters, I pursue the argument that "raw materials" is a colonial category that entered the vernacular with the colonization of the African continent. Moreover, "Raw materials" are not only conceived as economic entities, but also stand for an epistemic program of negating coloniality. For African property to be imagined as available, propertyless, "raw," and natural required media, photographic, and linguistic constellations that persist to this day. and economic disruptions, which are often untold in the history of media.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants