Lunchtime Seminar – 24 May – Iris Pakulla

Iris Pakulla (University of Cambridge)

Labouring (in)visibilities in the underground mine of Oyu Tolgoi

The underground mine (dald uurkhai) is the most precious place in OT and in Mongolia: 80% of OT's copper and gold reserve, the fourth largest in the world, lies in the depths. On 14 February 2022, in front of an international audience and broadcast on television, Mongolian Prime Minister L.Oyun-Erdene and Rio Tinto CEO Jakob Stausholm pressed the button that first exploded the underground ore reserve. This joint achievement, as the Prime Minister explained, is an important step in securing the trust of foreign investors. It also marked the successful entry into the exploitation phase after eleven years of project (development) phase, digging 1.3 kilometres underground and tunnelling for 203 kilometres. As the life spam of the underground mine is estimated at 100 years, Rio Tinto has invested in the extraction of the ore using the most advanced technology in the mining market, called "block cave mining". By dynamiting the giant sedimentary rock at the undercut level, the mineral reserve gradually collapses under its own weight, following the law of gravity. In short, as Jacques van Tonder, OT's Chief Development Officer, explains: "The underground is like an upside-down mountain, like an iceberg that you turn upside down and the ore crumbles.“

In this lunch seminar, I will present preliminary reflections on the notion of inversion and the “inverted landscape“ in addressing the hidden (dald) space of the South Gobi Desert. Beyond the precepts of opposition, inversion appeals to a different perceptual exercise, in which distances and dimensions are distorted, just as a negative of a positive image has a proportion of its own. In this scenario, what do practices of (in)visibility reveal about the dynamics of power in the mine? Understanding them as part of broader assemblages and mediations of technologies, bodies, gravitational forces, the crumbling of sedimentary rocks, ghosts and terrifying safety warning messages, what kinds of new social realities are emerging?