In 2024, the government consulted on critical minerals to be targeted for extractive mining in Aotearoa New Zealand. Janine Randerson conceived of Critical Minerals as an artists’ submission on this issue as a single-channel video work, made in collaboration with poetics by Arielle Walker.
Slow, macro-lens video images of critical minerals, including a rock of phosphorous in Nauru that stimulated large-scale mining of the island, are filmed at Tāmaki Paenga Hira, Auckland Museum. Marine Biology and Mineral collection curators Clinton Duffy and Lukas Phan-huy made the minerals available in their archives. The revolving images and Walker’s words unbury other means of approaching these minerals, as historical remedies or poisons, star-fall remnants and deep-time layers, offering names in te reo or ancient Greek. When the lives of elements are understood beyond their resource value, we may have a chance to avoid the damage to our whenua and sea beds that extractive mining causes. The work is projected on a screen made from bio cellulose, designed and made by materials designer Claudine Nalesu. The sound composition and mastering is by Rachel Shearer.
Minerals include konupango (manganese), cobolt, nickel, native arsenic, konukita (chromium), konurehu pākawa pungatara chromium potassium sulphate, antimony, bismuth, pākawa tūtaewhetū parataiao (phosphate), konukōreko (nikel) and pūtūtaewhetū (phosphorous).