Lithium
19 September 2020 - 14 August 2021
This Extraordinary Rock
The exhibition Lithium includes contributions by researchers, designers, musicians and artists. Inspired by commercials for mineral supplements and other lithium-enriched products, the film This Extraordinary Rock by David Habets, Cameron Hu and Stefan Schäfer takes the form of a sales pitch.
Do you remember what normal felt like?
Nostalgic for a lost normality, the salesperson character advocates for this special mineral as a cure for exhaustion. The script reflects on the systemic conditions and crises that have led to the global depletion of energy.
Navigating between the salt evaporation ponds in the Atacama Desert, equity firms in Shenzhen and energetic figures such as Evo Morales and Elon Musk, the film also underlines the omnipresence of this element in the environment, public waterways, human brains and interstellar matter. Is the solution to global burn-out simply a matter of concentration?
This Extraordinary Rock, by David Habets, Cameron Hu and Stefan Schäfer.
Essay
The script of this film can be read as an essay here It has also been translated into Dutch.
The exhibition Lithium is part of a long-term research project on the socio-political and environmental implications of this element. Selected essays are published on this website.
David Habets
David Habets works at the crossroads of landscape architecture, applied science and arts. He studied technical physics at the Fontys University of Applied Sciences and TU Eindhoven, and holds an MA from the Academy for Building Arts in Amsterdam. Among other independent projects, he has worked as a researcher and designer at TNO, the Holst Centre, REDscape and RAAAF (Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances).
Stefan Schäfer
Stefan Schäfer leads a research group on emerging technologies and social transformations in the Anthropocene at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam. His research examines the role of science and technology in contemporary politics, with a focus on democracy, sustainability and climate engineering. He is also a visiting fellow in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and an associate fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at the University of Oxford.
Cameron Hu
Cameron Hu is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Chicago. His research explores the political-economic and techno-scientific logics that shape the global fossil energy frontiers. His work engages with ethnographic fieldwork and archival research into petroleum geology, oilfield work, energy finance, oil economics, environmental politics and corporate forecasting. His essays have been published in Scapegoat, On-Site, C Magazine and Tactical Media, among other platforms.
From Burn-Out to 7UP: On Lithium and Mental Health
On 14 January 2021, Het Nieuwe Instituut is organising an online event about the role that lithium plays in the treatment of mental health problems and symptoms of exhaustion and overwork. Entitled _From Burn-Out to 7UP: On Lithium and Mental Health_, it is part of a series of public activities related to _Lithium_ and Thursday Night Live!
The discursive programme TNL! Lithium offers an in-depth addition to the exhibition that is now showing at Het Nieuwe Instituut. (Online) visitors can be recharged by the sustainable energy source of lectures and debates. In each event, they can learn more about the role that lithium plays in the different forms and aspects of burn-out that are covered by the exhibition; from raw material extraction to mental health and the so-called green energy landscape.