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DEEPWATER ALCHEMY virtual event with Greenhouse Center and Lisa Yin Han
December 16, 2024 @ 7:00 am – 8:00 am Pacific
Lisa Yin Han will join the Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger for a virtual discussion of her new book Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor, on Monday, December 16 at 4pm Norway / 7am Pacific Standard Time.
This event is free and open to the public. More details at The Greenhouse.
Set against the backdrop of climate change, energy transition, and the expansion of industrial offshore extractions, Deepwater Alchemy looks at oceanic media and its representation of the seabed in terms of valuable resources. Lisa Yin Han introduces the concept of extractive mediation to describe the conflations between resource prospecting and undersea knowledge production, prompting us to ask not whether we can tame the seafloor, but, rather, why and for whom are we taming it?
“Lisa Yin Han takes readers on a compelling journey through deep seas to chart the extractive mediations of ocean environments. Along the way, we learn how crucial infrastructural media are to composing, visualizing, exploiting, salvaging, and transforming oceans. From mining to pipelines, telemetry, and observatories, Deepwater Alchemy makes an essential contribution to the watery depths of the blue humanities.”—Jennifer Gabrys, author of Citizens of Worlds: Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental Struggle
“Deepwater Alchemy tells a story vital to our present, when deep-sea oil drilling, deep-sea mining, and the state of the sea, from top to bottom, organic and inorganic, is under grave distress from human enterprise. Lisa Yin Han gives us an unexpected way in, screening the abyss as a kind of medium revealing deep pasts, presents, and futures.”—Stefan Helmreich, author of A Book of Waves
