Kiruna Eulogy Prophecy explores cycles of extraction and displacement in Kiruna, a town in Arctic Sweden and home to the largest iron ore mine in the world.

The exhibition focuses on the process of the town being relocated due to the state-owned mining operation destabilizing the earth beneath it. Tom de Peyret documents the forced exodus of the town through his photographic practice exploring future ruins, re-purposing the detritus of industry and dispossessed urban forms as readymades: objects, buildings, landscapes and atmospheres which become technical images, defamiliarizing their utility. It invites the audience to contend with the sources of the “magic” we experience everyday — the lithium in our pockets, the beams above our heads — and the possibilities enabled by technology.

Kiruna embodies the contradictions of contemporary life: extraction to feed the never-ending hunger for growth and consumption which comes at the expense of the life which it purports to sustain. This exhibition which includes archival materials and artifacts, is a pre-archaeological endeavor both a eulogy and a prophecy bound by this extractive dynamic. The technical images exhibited are a prediction of the future in Kiruna and beyond, certain to repeat itself until it comes true, not through divination but through a religious-like zeal for the moral superiority of capital and the divine right of technological progress.

Photo Credits : Mischa Schlegel / @mischa.sch