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Vanishing Acts

The Raw Materialism of Otobong Nkanga and Seba Calfuqueo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2025

Michael Shane Boyle
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Abstract

Despite myths of its dematerialization, capitalism continues to deepen its reliance on resource extraction. Performances by Otobong Nkanga and Seba Calfuqueo confront this trend, mapping it onto longer histories of expropriation in Namibia and Chile, respectively. By activating sculptural objects composed of mined raw materials, both artists make visible the colonial and ongoing forms of extractive violence that underpin automation and the socalled green energy transition.

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TDR , Volume 69 , Issue 3: Performance, Possession, and Automation Brown University TDR Consortium Issue , September 2025 , pp. 102 - 121
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of New York University Tisch School of the Arts

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TDReadings

Jackson, Shannon. 2012. “Just-in-Time: Performance and the Aesthetics of Precarity.” TDR 56, 4 (T216):10–31. doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00211CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Rebecca, ed. 2015. “New Materialisms and Performance Studies.” In “New Materialism and Performance.” Special issue. TDR 59, 4 (T228):7–17. doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00493CrossRefGoogle Scholar