TRACING EXTRACTIONS WITH LEHMAN BROTHERS

One cannot miss the transformation of the window at Gothersgade 167, which has now become a smudged painting in white shades created with a thick layer of sunscreen: smeared and signed audaciously in vinyl with the name “Lehman Brothers”. For the ones whose lives were (and are) impacted by the last financial crisis (2008), the spectre of Lehman Brothers may send some chills down the spine – especially seen against the ongoing global pandemic and what it will bring further to economic and social life across the globe. However, today, Lehman Brothers has reincarnated into a Danish group of artists, currently made up by: Peter Birkholm, Christian Danielewitz, Jonas Kasper Jensen and Kim Young Kilde.

Following the collapse of the investment bank, the group appropriated the name Lehman Brothers and has been working under it since 2012, often in a witty and light-hearted way, with the codes of late capitalism and its many ridiculous manifestations. In the current exhibition, Cerro Point Blanco at SixtyEight Art Institute, Lehman Brothers traces one of the most dominant activities of global capitalism – extraction, which they observed in its raw forms in their first research trip to Chile. During this journey, associations between titanium mines, celestial phenomena, cetology, ammonia, cryptocurrencies and Moby Dick began to form the body of their artistic research, from which a central metaphor – whaling – emerged miraculously. By carefully reassembling these encountered objects, texts, stories, and even animals from their trip, Lehman Brothers has materialized whaling into an allegorical reconceptualization of extraction and its discontents.

A view of the installation from the street (Gothersgade 167). Photo: SixtyEight Art Institute.

The viewer sees the first work even as they enter the exhibition space: a sculpture that consists of two soaring titanium poles lying across each other, looking as if harpoons have violently penetrated the ceiling of the room.

There are cut-up cacti (also smeared with sunscreen) and mosquito lights mounted and tied to each pole, suggesting the first of many associations with the Atacama desert in northern Chile. Together with the wool-like whiteness of the facade, created by the sunscreen smear on the window, the sculpture seems to hint that visitors are walking inside a gigantic creature, whose full appearance is not easily perceivable at a human scale and whose origin is as yet unknown. Nonetheless, the violence of the penetration seems to show that the creature is being stalked by an enraged hunter.

Lehman Brothers, Titanic Sun Blocker X. (6000 mm x 40 mm titanium rods x 2, with sun block, cactus and mosquito lights). Photo: SixtyEight Art Institute.

Moving further into the space, the visitor encounters a refrigerator that cools a few transparent Starbucks’ cups, carefully displaying their well-known green siren logo. Instead of the Frappuccino that one would normally find (in a ‘Grande’ cup) there are fat, live leeches, awkwardly twitching their bodies up and down the glossy surface of these transparent plastic cups. Where a white titanium stone (from Atacama) is placed on each cup, highlighting the link between the work and mineral mining, but also leaving questions open about their connection to consumer goods and the infamy of leeches.

At the back of the space is a black and white film which unfolds a series of desert landscapes, observatories, starry universes. This film, sharing the same name as the exhibition, Cerro Point Blanco, is coupled with a narration of excerpts taken from Chapter 42 of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, called On the Whiteness of the Whale. The narration voiced by the New York based actor and acting instructor, Lenard Petit, reveals Moby Dick as the source of the allegory for portraying the concealed violence of human desire and extraction that underlies the glossy promises late capitalism provides.

The story that Lehman Brothers seems to be retelling through the exhibition is, at first sight, one that speaks of the self-destructive madness of extraction, but it is also about introspection into our everyday lives.

In the common imagination, extraction that involves "the forced removal of raw materials and life forms from the Earth's surface, depths and biosphere" (1), is, or should be, rather observable due to its mammoth scale and motion. But much like the confrontation with the "monstrous" whale that does not turn up until Chapter 132 in Moby Dick, the monstrosity of extractivism that the Lehman Brothers trace is often hidden in plain sight, at least when viewed from this part of the world. For instance, Starbuck, one of the sailors in Moby Dick, is now known as one of the many faces of consumerism that are prevalent in the social lives of metropolitans. Moreover, the sea as a territory keeps reminding us of the clash between nature and commerce, for example in June 2012, the ship Norwich which belongs to the Danish shipping company Maersk hit a whale, and arrived in the port of Rotterdam with the 12 metre carcass lying across its bulbous bow (2).

Lehman Brothers, Titanic Sun Blocker X, Starbucks Leech Vibocold Cube and Cerro Point Blanco. Photo: SixtyEight Art Institute.

At the other, and rather dark, side of the "invincible" global capitalist model, the extraction activities upon which nascent capitalism was built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were largely based upon the slave economy begun in Latin America and then fully defined in the eighteenth century in North America. Today, like titanium mining and oil and gas drilling, the model of extractivism continues to structure the economies of Latin America and serves as the source of struggles and resistance in the region, which can seem distant and unrelated to people who, for example, reside in Scandinavia. But its metamorphosis also reaches far beyond, into areas such as cryptocurrency and space exploration, which transgress heterogeneous social landscapes and political formations (3).

Just like the "wool-like whiteness" of the whale induces fear in humans – as the “elusive quality of whiteness” not only inspires pure or kind associations; in addition to racialized ones; but also transcendent horrors – the whiteness of materials, such as cosmetic products, scientific equipment, and titanium rocks, also speaks of such ambiguous associations. In the exhibition, we see the protective white sunscreen which contains titanium dioxide that protects human skin from UV damage, and the shiny silver titanium telescopes that gaze curiously into space and advance our scientific knowledge. The deceptive purity of care and scientific curiosity conceals the violent forms of exploitation and export of raw materials, through which the ‘peripheral’ Latin American countries are inserted into the world capitalist system, disguising how fundamental these nations in fact are to the generation of wealth in daily consumption, expenditure and global (space) economy.

Lehman Brothers, Starbucks Leech Vibocold Cube (475 x 445 x 525 mm cooler and Starbucks cups, with local leeches and titanium rocks from Cerro Blanco). Photo: SixtyEight Art institute.

And to this end, the metaphor of whaling also reminds us of the parasitic relationship between capitalism and human desire, where each and every one of us is implicated. As Starbuck cried out to Ahab, the maddened captain of the whaling ship Pequod in the hunt for the white whale: "Oh! Ahab," cried Starbuck, "not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!"

Just like leeches attach to animals and suck out blood to fuel their own lives, these awkward animals are often used as a metaphor to portray the system behind capitalist economies and their exploitation. But we’re perhaps equally parasitic to capitalism, as people who enjoy the promises of satisfaction it provides through consumption and accumulation (4). We seek commercial cultures to satisfy our own human desire, just like Ahab seeks Moby Dick.

Lehman Brothers. Still from the work Cerro Point Blanco (HD video B/W 23:08 min. Dimensions variable).

Following the allegory, it seems a tragic ending is, perhaps, inevitable. But just as in Moby Dick Melville seeks to explore the ambiguities of good versus evil, as well as the ambiguities within human beings – "Call me Ishmael", as the story goes – here Lehman Brothers tells another about reflexivity, redemption and possible self-salvation.

"Capitalism breeds anticapitalists" (5), just like the new artist group Lehman Brothers arose from the ashes of the failed investment bank. "Another world is possible", as the World Social Forum declared in 2001, but the path to it is not clear. It is not always easy to pick a side and fight against capitalism. To some, anticapitalism is ridiculous in itself too.

Just like the Starbucks cups and the titanium that is prevalent in electronics today – these goods and services produced by transnational corporations make up the everyday lives of many whose material interests do not fall clearly on one side of the fence or the other (6).

But one can perhaps still work with capitalism, at least to begin with. Among the many valuable reflections Lehman Brothers brings out, one of them is perhaps also their artistic research practices in engaging with the cultural bi-products of high-impact financialization.

While taking on a journey to explore extraction in distant landscapes and looking outward for encounters (like their residency at Residencias ARC in Chile, and participation in the cultural and site research forum Managing New Displacements from Geography in the Atacama Desert), Lehman Brothers also take on a journey of introspection into moments of confusion, loss and impasse, where they rely on reflexive exploration into their own beliefs, judgements and practices (perhaps in their contested relationship with the increasingly commodified field of conceptual art). These research practices form a method for working with capitalism that concentrates on the movement of deep extraction processes as well as its multiple mediations and attachments through its actors and economies.

In a Latourian fashion, Lehman Brothers materialise their reflexive explorations into interesting and various assemblages of actors, objects, concepts and texts. And for artists, such exploration can manifest in both material form – Cerro Point Blanco –, and textual form – a book that shares the name of the exhibition, where the artists reassemble an almost ethnographic account of their own artistic research journey on extraction, together with essays by observers of our Anthropocene and its technologies (to be published by Really Simple Syndication Press in October 2020).

Returning to our everyday lives, artist or not, each day can also be seen as a journey to trace extractions or other manifestations of capitalism, where we reassemble associations and start to localize the processes of global capitalism that are largely invisible to us in our everyday practices of living.

As for how this exploratory approach will manifest itself in each person's life and what outcome it may yield, I am not sure. But it is good to remember, while we inevitably dwell on the parasitic relationship between our desire and capitalism, that leeches can also be used for therapy in themselves. And like the Pequod's voyage, the quest for anticapitalism, even in the darkest (and perhaps the best) imaginaries where it inflicts pain and terror and is doomed to fail, is still a source of the sublime, which inspires us with awe and reminds us of what we are capable of feeling.

Perhaps I am ending this on a much too romantic note. Perhaps anticapitalism is an obsession in itself. But as a witness and a participant in all the contradictory processes of capitalism, "I (and you) try all things; I (and you) achieve what I (and you) can". And when in doubt, perhaps think of Lehman Brothers, its many reincarnations, and Moby Dick.

The story begins where it ends.

Lehman Brothers “Cerro Point Blanco”
At SixtyEight Art Institute till October 10, 2020.

Mezzadra, S., & Neilson, B. (2017). On the multiple frontiers of extraction: excavating contemporary capitalism.
Cultural Studies, 31(2-3), 185-204.
Facing dead whale or lost cargo, shipper Maersk turns to social media by Ole Mikkelsen, 03/09/2020. Reuters (accessed 18/09/2020).
Mezzadra, S., & Neilson, B. (2017). On the multiple frontiers of extraction: excavating contemporary capitalism.
Cultural Studies, 31(2-3), 185-204.
McGowan, T. (2016). Capitalism and desire: The psychic cost of free markets. Columbia University Press.
Why Be Anticapitalist? By Erik Olin Wright. 26/08/2020. Verso Press Blog. (accessed 18/09/2020).
Wright, Erik Olin. (2019). How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century. Verso Press.

This essay is part of an initiative to foster Danish and English language critical writings from a range of new talents across the visual arts; and as a partnership between I DO ART and SixtyEight Art Institute.

CANCAN WANG

Cancan Wang holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Fudan University, China, and a master’s degree in applied cultural analysis from University of Copenhagen, Denmark, through which she cultivated a broad range of intellectual interest in topics such as love, gender, technology and art. Pursuing her interest in art criticism comes from her work in information technologies and their impacts on social relationships, which she organized into a Phd in the field of information systems from Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Cancan Wang works as an Assistant Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen and is based in Copenhagen.

Cancan has contributed to idoart.dk since 2019.