Visual Culture Program Event

Natural resources and their industrial scale extraction undergird modern industry and make possible significant breakthroughs in engineering and scientific inquiry while also driving climate change and unsustainable forms of life. The same resources have also long been the stuff of art making. In this conversation, we will consider how art and art history may shape how we think about extractive industries, the resources they produce, and the environmental, social, and political costs of doing so.

Jessica Segall is an multidisciplinary artist based in New York City, and the current Artist in Residence at Caltech. She is a 2023 Guggenehim Fellow, and exhibits her work internationally. Jessica teaches courses on Ecofeminism, Interspecies Design, video art and sculpture.

Brian Jacobson is Professor of Visual Culture at Caltech and the author of The Cinema of Extractions: Film Resources and Their Forms (Columbia University Press, 2025).