Aslı Uludağ

Sustainable Grounds

The dichotomy of Life and Nonlife, Povinelli states, fuels late liberal geontopower (2016). This delineation governs the devastated environment of the Büyük Menderes Graben, the Denizli Graben and the Gediz Graben in Turkey through geothermal energy production. This project focuses on the toxic manifestations of this process to complicate notions of ‘sustainable technology’ and ‘renewable resource’ and reveals how sustainability is utilised to make the Anthropocene and the climate crisis productive for late liberal governance.

Through a performative and aesthetic practice of sensing, I follow the manifestations of the deep subsurface on the surface (toxic or otherwise) to explore the practices and the worlds that have emerged from the particular surface/deep subsurface relations in these grabens. This allows me to conceptualise the ground as a matter-space that is in constant flux and imagine a sustainability that engages with the deep subsurface through its agency in making worlds.