And if I devoted my life to one of its feathers? Aesthetic Responses to Extraction, Accumulation, and Dispossession

An exploration of the realities of environmental and social catastrophe through art practices. “And if I devoted my life to one of its feathers?” wrote the Chilean poet, artist, and feminist activist Cecilia Vicuña in the early 1970s. Vicuña countered anthropocentric and hetero-patriarchal urges with healing and appreciation, reviving the aesthetic and spiritual bonds between human and more-than-human entities and worlds. Revolving around this vision of interconnectivity, this book, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name at Kunsthalle Wien, seeks to create a collective dialogue around unequal distribution of power, sovereignty, and social and ecological justice. The exhibited works and written contributions reflect on the rationale of exploitation, the fast-paced mining of raw materials, and environmental destruction as a colonial legacy. They deconstruct Western anthropocentric models and enduring colonial and racist discourses, trace the stories of indigenous struggles f