fORUM is Mercer Union’s ongoing series of talks, lectures, interviews, screenings, and performances.
Art Metropole
896 College St
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The Pleasure Report is a new monograph on the work of New Mineral Collective (NMC), a collaborative art initiative by Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė, which explores the intersections of land, body, and extractive industries. Join us for the launch of The Pleasure Report on Saturday, 25 January from 3-5 PM at Art Metropole, where Busse and Škarnulytė will present the book in conversation moderated by Warren Harper. This event is held in conjunction with NMC’s exhibition on view at Mercer Union.
This publication examines the processes and conceptual provocations underpinning NMC’s work over the past decade, including projects such as Pleasure Prospects for the 2019 Toronto Biennial and Hollow Earth (2013). Framed by speculative futures, geotrauma healing, and counter prospecting—an innovative act of claiming mineral rights to prevent extraction—NMC challenges destructive mining narratives by envisioning alternatives rooted in care, slowness, and reparative futures. From the corporate spectacle of the PDAC mining conference to the haunting yet utopian architecture of Ontario Place, their work reimagines landscapes—both physical and metaphorical—as spaces of resistance, memory, and pleasure. The publication offers a poetic and activist perspective on the scars of extraction, revealing how land, like the body, remembers and heals. Featuring texts by Audre Lorde, Kjerstin Uhre, Quinn Latimer, Susan Reid, and Astrida Neimanis; poetry by Cecily Nicholson; and an interview between editor Jayne Wilkinson, curator Candice Hopkins, and New Mineral Collective.