[Film and Discussion] Media and Heritage Workshops and Activities: Nickel Unearthed - The Human and Climate Costs of Indonesia's Nickel Industry

Media and Heritage Workshops and Activities: Tracing the Spice Trade History IV

The Media and Heritage Workshops and Activities consists of five parts:
1. Art Exhibition by Fadriah Syuaib: Dari Gunung ke Lait (Spices from Mountain to Sea)
2. Urban Sketchwalk - Tracing the Spice Route in Surabaya
3. Heritage Walk with Oud Soerabaja Hunter and Maulana Ibrahim from Ternate Heritage Society - Tracing the Spice Route in Surabaya
4. Film and Discussion with Adlun Fiqri - "Nickel Unearthed: The Human and Climate Costs of Indonesia's Nickel Industry""
5. Concluding Roundtable

The main purpose of the Media and Heritage Workshops and Activities is to provide a space for and to facilitate exchanges between practitioners and grassroots communities from Ternate, North Maluku, and Surabaya. In the age of digital media, images have played a pertinent role in mediating everyday social relations and sustaining collective memories. They have the capacity to address/redress marginalized histories, contest official narratives, and envision narratives to imagine a more sustainable future. Seen this way, images and image-making practices are potent sites of creativity and political engagement. In this series of workshops and activities, we would like to centre the work of heritage, arts, and environment-related practitioners to experiment with their medium in situ and to discuss what issues and concerns, through their practices, emerged and the challenges they face. The experiences from two Indonesian urban centres, one in Java and the other one in Ternate, North Maluku, offer unique perspectives on concerns of using visual media practices that articulate contemporary issues surrounding urban and heritage activism, alongside environmental struggles.

This programme is a part of the SNF-funded research project: Images, (In)visibilities, and Work on Appearances (IMAGEAPP). Please consult our Instagram (@imageapproject) where we use the platform to document, exhibit, and interact with the work of our interlocutors, including those from this programme.

Film and discussion:
This film screening highlights the concerns of one of our Ternate-based interlocutors Adlun Fiqri. He is an environmental activist, documentary photographer, and media activist from Sagea, Halmahera, North Maluku. In 2018, Adlun decided to move back to his village in Halmahera and set up a collective space for ecological advocacy and indigenous rights movement out of concern for the expansion of mining territories near their village. The drive for “critical minerals” purported as necessary for the “green energy transition” is transforming frontier regions worldwide.
While these regions received renewed global attention, activists, NGOs, and journalists, relying on each other’s network, have challenged the dominant narratives surrounding energy transition by addressing injustices occurring in the surrounding area since this commodity boom on nickel. These coverages open up debates in media discourse both globally and nationally concerning energy transition and its hidden cost in relation to environmental justice.

We will screen two visual materials related to Adlun’s work as an activist and journalist. First, a short documentary entitled Nickel Unearthed: The Human and Climate Costs of Indonesia's Nickel Industry produced by the NGO Climate Rights International. Second, a slideshow presentation of a photo essay by Adlun.

It will be followed by a public discussion and Q n A session. This session is supported by IMAGE APP PROJECT (IG: @imageapproject).