This exhibition concentrates in the cylinder as a formal metaphor of the relationship that our culture of extraction has established with nature.

Stratigraphic columns, boreholes, smokestacks, etc., stand as the structural material and symbolic media in that relation. The series of objects, images, models, experiments, and historical documents selected for the show address the environmental, cultural, and social consequences of past and present modes of industrial extraction and present a series of critical spaces emerging at the intersection of geohistory, geobiology, and biopolitics.

The design divides the Rouse Gallery in two spaces. The first one addresses the specific history of the mine fire affecting Centralia since 1962. The second part presents a series of documents and artifacts (local microbes inside petri dishes, NOAA flasks, Winogradsky columns, local boreholes, historical safety lamps, drilling samples, etc.) that illustrate the above mentioned cylindrical relation. The exhibition concludes with a fim installation of a column that takes the form of a dysfunctional safety lamp visualizing gas, temperature, and soil data collected in Centralia since 1962.