Resource extraction collectively represents one of humanity's most severe impacts upon the ecological patterns of the planet.  Decades of extraction have left a web of fragmented patches, resembling an archipelago of anthropogenic islands. In dire times, humans attempt to clear away these past troubles, in hopes of making a more suitable future. However, the decay of the landscape, coupled with contamination issues, continually leads to a loss of habitat, ecology and potential economic viability.
 
By examining the relationship between extraction and reclamation, we can begin to give a spatial vocabulary for taking collective responsibility for landscape transformation. This project attempts to spatialize the climatic uncertainty and challenge the practice of reclamation in the post-extraction landscape. By treating well pads as islands, we can frame and simplify the seemingly unbound and complex and begin to kindle a series of provocations. This project offers rhetorical interventions that are not intended to be solutions, but hopes to lead to more inquiries and questions. A proposal for re-thinking reclamation through alternative conversations.

Credits:

Celia Winters.