Son[i]a #340
Jaime Vindel
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Jaime Vindel is a researcher, teacher, and essayist. For some time now, he has focused on studying the relationship between metaphors of thermodynamics and the cultural imaginaries of fossil modernity, as part of an eco-political revision of art history and visual culture. In his most recent book, Estética fósil. Imaginarios de la energía y crisis ecosocial (Fossil Aesthetics. Imaginaries of Energy and Eco-Social Crisis), Vindel explores the crucial role of fossil fuels in the cultural production of the last two hundred years. He argues that they have led to the naturalisation of a productivist cosmovision that tends to legitimise ecocidal practices and colonial extractivism, radically disrupting (even further) ecological cycles in modes of production.
In this podcast, we talk to Jaime Vindel about art, entropy and economics. We go into museums and petrol stations to understand their materiality. We talk about the universal exhibitions of the 19th century and how the removal of objects from their places of origin is directly linked to the process of environmental degradation. We look at their steel and glass pavilions, and find the concrete. We also discuss coal and oil, the concept of productivity, and the dark underbelly of certain visual imaginaries. By the time we get to today’s eco-social crisis and possible techno-fix and ecofascist solutions, poised on the brink of the precipice, he invites us to abandon apathy, rethink the end of the world, reformat our historical imagination, and transform our ecological outlook.
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