Deer Isle Granite

Abstract

This thesis inquires into the project, Deer Isle Granite, 2018-9, a series of actions and multichannel video installation tracing the use of Deer Isle Granite in the northeastern United States from the late 19th century to the present, as a practice of mapping relations (social, economic, political and natural) within the context of ecological crisis and debate around the Anthropocene thesis. Drawing on Jason Moore's reframing of this proposed epoch in Earth's history as the "Capitalocene" acknowledging inherent power dynamics at play, and Heather Davis and Zoe Todd's argument for the logic of settler-colonialism's underlying role in the Anthropocene, this paper analyzes Deer Isle Granite in terms of practices of decolonization as framed by MTL Collective, and "radical cartography" as defined by Lize Mogel.