Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Ronay Bakan
Guest: Dr. Eray Çayli
Book Discussed: Earthmoving: Extractivism, War, and Visuality in Northern Kurdistan (University of Texas Press, 2025)
Date: February 20, 2026

This episode features Dr. Eray Çayli discussing his new book, which explores the intersections of extractivism, war, and visuality in Northern Kurdistan during the tumultuous 2010s. Blending ethnography, art critique, and social theory, Dr. Çayli and his host, Dr. Bakan, explore how extractivist logics manifest in both physical landscapes and affective, visual cultures—and how colonized communities produce counter-visions challenging these forces.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genesis and Collaborative Nature of the Project

• Origin Story: The book's impetus was not a conventional research project, but emerged from a 2018 invitation to coordinate a summer school by the Amed branch (Diyarbakır) of the Chamber of Architects, an activist-oriented professional organization (02:49).
• Fieldwork in Amed: Dr. Çayli’s extended stay at the artist-run space Loading—an open, collaborative venue for artists, architects, and the public—immersed him in daily life and collaborative creative processes (04:12).
• Artistic Collaboration: Engagement with Loading’s founders and local creatives profoundly shaped the book, offering insight into community strategies in the aftermath of war and during "repair" and reconstruction efforts (06:02).

“I ended up actually staying there for the better part of 2019... I actually opened the place on a daily basis because... people can come there... That was really a priceless experience.”
— Dr. Eray Çayli (05:00)

2. Main Argument & Theoretical Contribution

• Interdependence between Extractivism, War, and Visuality: Çayli’s main intervention is to theorize not only the material but also affective and visual dimensions of extractivism in a context he describes as a “statusless colony.” (07:44)
• Statuslessness of Coloniality: Kurdistan's colonial condition is unique; it was never formally colonial, yet shaped by colonial dynamics—marked by overlapping forms of population engineering, genocide, and modern state violence, all operating without the clear "colonizer-colonized" binaries seen elsewhere (11:10).
• Visuality as a Site of Struggle: The book argues that violence and extractive processes are made sensible—and are contested—through visual cultures and sensibilities, not just economic or political relations (15:20).
• Regional Significance: The framework repositions Kurdistan within global networks of racial capitalism and extractivism, highlighting how visuality and humanitarian discourses can be co-opted by the state even as they are reclaimed to generate counter-narratives.

“I argue that extractivism proliferates, not despite, but precisely through these sensibilities. And that is to say that it engages these sensibilities in its own way.”
— Dr. Eray Çayli (11:40)

3. Visuality as Analytical Lens

• Case Study (Tigris River): In 2018, state officials used architectural drawings and visual frames to present "repair" projects along the Tigris, combining metrics with aestheticized language to justify interventions—while obscuring the state's own role in the original destruction (19:45).
• Earthmoving as Metaphor: The same trucks (“hafriat”) clearing rubble from conflict are redeployed in “restorative” state projects, literally and figuratively moving earth, histories, remains, and emotional affect (22:40).

“Earth moving trucks not only move the earth, they also move remains of violence, but they also move the witnesses of this violence. They are actually involved in this business of leaving…the witnesses of violence sentimentally moved in a particular way that aligns with a certain valuation logic...that characterizes extractivism.”
— Dr. Eray Çayli (25:15)

• Role of Art Spaces: Visuality is central not only to state violence and its sanitization but also to grassroots regrouping—Loading becomes a hub for artists dismissed for antiwar activism, leveraging art to process and critique violence (29:00).

4. Navigating (and Resisting) Colonial and Racial Frameworks in Art

• Confinement by “Regionalist” Canons: Artists from Kurdistan confront Eurocentric art-world expectations, often being typecast as local “heroes” or “victims” rather than fully recognized creative agents (33:40).
• Rejecting Vilification and Heroization: Çayli details how artist Cengiz Tekin, for example, subverts both denigration and hero worship by referencing European landscape traditions—both critiquing their colonial legacy and positioning Kurdish art as conversant with global forms (35:52).

“He says that, you know, I'm a landscape photographer... my art is not simply the solution; it's historically, systemically part of the problem.”
— Dr. Eray Çayli (37:55)

• Artists’ Reflexivity: The self-critical and dialogical approaches of Loading’s artists challenge both state-imposed and art-market-imposed frameworks, reflecting on their own entanglements with structures of power.

5. Non-Extractivist Sensibilities in Art

• Case of Belit Sağ: A Turkish artist not from Kurdistan, Sağ’s video work—created in the wake of counterinsurgency in Cizre—foregrounds the mediating gaze of the camera, questions its historic complicity in violence, and allows local women and children to appropriate and repurpose visual technologies (41:47).
• Collaboration Over Extraction: Sağ’s practice exemplifies a non-extractivist sensibility by refusing the role of outside “savior,” encouraging shared authorship, and interrogating the ethics of witnessing and documentation.

“Sometimes the camera kind of fails to show certain things. And she constantly raises these questions, like, what's happening? ...her own camera is historically… implicated in some of the kind of problematic situations that we see.”
— Dr. Eray Çayli (44:56)

• Patriarchy, Coloniality, and Violence: The art’s collaborative nature exposes hidden layers of patriarchal and racial violence, tracing their historical continuity through the experiences and participation of local women.

6. From Theory and Art to Transformation

• Counter-Extractivist Futures: Dr. Çayli emphasizes that forms of anti-extractivist collaboration are already happening on the ground (Ahmed’s Loading space being a key example), and that the book is not a roadmap but a reflection on these ongoing practices. (51:52)
• Limits and Possibilities: The risk lies not in art or theory per se, but in assigning too much transformative power to single individuals, works, or theoretical approaches; rather, the value is in raising critical questions and facilitating collective processes (54:10).

“The role of theory, the role of artworks like those I discuss in the book is to raise questions… and also to facilitate, to bring people together physically, actually, in the same space in a kind of embodied way…”
— Dr. Eray Çayli (54:24)

• Learning from Collaboration: Çayli recounts how community members redirected his contributions—valuing his writing and theorizing as much as his practical efforts—underscoring mutual responsibility and co-production (56:48).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the ambiguity of colonial actors:
  “We are kind of sure that this is a colonial context, but okay, who the colonizer is seems to be much less straightforward than, let's say, the Americas or Australia…”
  — Dr. Eray Çayli (12:58)

• On artistic reflexivity:
  “He references visually… the famous painting by Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog… to show that this kind of particular artistic tradition… is actually part of the problem.”
  — Dr. Eray Çayli (36:50)

• On the importance of shared authorship:
  “Whoever is… troubled by this problem, insofar as they're especially invited to do something... they should really contribute to the work.”
  — Dr. Eray Çayli (42:22)

• Community engagement at the book launch:
  “It turned into a conversation. I talked… two, three minutes, and then audience members basically just interrupted me, started talking and they were… excited about this focus on visuality…”
  — Dr. Eray Çayli (51:58)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:49] — Origin of the book and collaborative research in Amed.
• [07:44] — Main argument: The interdependence of extractivism, war, and visuality.
• [11:10] — Colonial statuslessness of Kurdistan.
• [19:45] — Role of visuality: Tigris River vignette, earthmoving.
• [29:00] — Loading’s dual role as art space and site of regrouping post-violence.
• [33:40] — Navigating Eurocentric art frameworks, resisting regionalist confinement.
• [41:47] — Case of Belit Sağ: Non-extractivist artistic sensibility.
• [51:52] — Art, theory, and practice: Possibilities for counter-extractive futures.
• [56:48] — Lessons from collaboration: mutual accountability between locals and researchers.

Conclusion

Dr. Eray Çayli’s Earthmoving reframes extractivism in Northern Kurdistan as a fundamentally visual, affective, and collaborative process at the intersection of war, repair, coloniality, and cultural resistance. Through vignettes, deep analysis, and critical self-reflection, both guest and host illuminate how art and theory do not merely interpret the world but become sites of embodied contestation, raising questions essential for anti-extractivist futures.