Extraction

As we observe in the beginning of our video work QUARRY_V1 (2024), as animals which were hunted and a resource which was taken, these lions represent both meanings of the word quarry. Hence they embody a very particular kind of extraction. These individuals are embedded in the history of the literal and physical construction of Kenya and stand for a very specific kind of heritage. In their current location, they reproduce a cultural and scientific capital. Passers-by in our vox-populi, as well as today’s residents of the Taita Taveta county (where the Tsavo National Park is located) make the point: they represent a not-insignificant financial capital which does not accrue to Kenya.

More importantly, increasing amounts of scientific data is being extracted from these lions. In the context of the Anthropocene/capitalocene and climate change, and as technologies such as DNA scanning improves, the kind of information which can be taken from these lions grows and grows, opening up previously unforeseeable avenues of research. Hence the knowledge that scientific specimens such as the lions, that were taken the during colonial period, continues to reside and be reproduced outside of the countries from which they were taken. “The very materials of tissues are in a state of becoming–becoming ever more microbial, epistemic, and valuable in different ways” (Leonelli 2012a; Star 2010, cited in van Allen 2017: 533). This might represent in the future an even more powerful barrier to those who advocate for their restitution.

Adrian Van Allen, "Bird Skin to Biorepository: Making Materials Matter in the Afterlives of Natural History Collections", Knowledge Organization, Vol. 44, No. 7, 2017, pp. 529-544.