25 January 2025, 3:00pm–5:00pm ET

New Mineral Collective

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.

Information

Tanya Busse is a visual artist born in Moncton, Canada, based in Tromsø, Norway. Her practice spans moving-image, installation, and photography to explore the intersection between representations of nature and the presence of industrial or post-human traces. She has had solo exhibitions at Entrée, Bergen (2024); Vaga Center for Art and Knowledge, Azores (2022); Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg (2020); Mumbai Art Room (2018-19); PODIUM, Oslo (2018). Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Greenlight Triennial, Porsgrunn (2024); Nanaimo Art Gallery (2020); Office of Contemporary Art, Oslo (2018); Bergen Kunsthall (2018), and the Turku Biennial (2013). She received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, studied at Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee, and holds an MFA from the Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art. She is the co-director of Mondo Books.


Emilija Škarnulytė is an artist and filmmaker born in Vilnius, Lithuania. Working between documentary and speculative fiction, Škarnulytė’s films and immersive installations explore deep time and invisible structures, from the cosmic and geologic to the ecological and political. She is the recipient of the 2023 Ars Fennica Award and the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize. Škarnulytė represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano (2019) and was included in the Baltic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2018). She has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthall Trondheim (2024); Canal Projects, New York (2024); Kunsthaus Göttingen(2024), and Ferme-Asile, Sion (2023). Her films have been screened at Tate Modern and Serpentine Galleries, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She is the co-founder of the Polar Film Lab.


Warren Harper is a curator and researcher currently based in Toronto, Canada. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, where his curatorial research project explored Essex’s role in Britain’s nuclear story. Warren was a director at The Old Waterworks, Southend-on-Sea, an artist-led charity, and has worked with The Other MA (TOMA), Southend-on-Sea; OCAD University, Toronto; CARA, New York; Whitstable Biennale; and South London Gallery. Warren is currently Exhibition Manager at MOCA, Toronto and teaches for the Master of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies at the University of Toronto. He is a member of the plumb, Toronto, a collective of cultural workers as well as the Working Class Creatives Database.

About the Series

fORUM is Mercer Union’s ongoing series of talks, lectures, interviews, screenings, and performances.