Like a mighty river that flows and deviates from its course, this publication invites us on a journey to decipher the hidden predatory logic within the mechanisms of gold mining exploitation and the resulting socio-ecological devastation in the Guayana and Venezuela’s Amazon regions. More than a warning, What the Mine Gives, the Mine Takes presents a collective and sensitive cartography of this mining conflict through a diversity of art projects, poems, essays, diagrams, satellite visions, and documentary images.

Conceived by Berlin-based Venezuelan artist Ana Alenso, this publication emerged as a result of her artistic research for the installation Lo que la mina te da, la mina te quita in 2020. The installation was commissioned by Urbane Künste Ruhr for the exhibition Ruhr Ding: Klima (2021) and was also presented as a solo exhibition at Galerie Wedding in Berlin in 2020. Notable contributors to the publication include the environmental organization SOS Orinoco and ACL/SPV, filmmaker Alexandra Henao, Indigenous Pemón Kukuy, poet Santiago Acosta, researcher Alessandra Caputo Jaffe, urban architect Ricardo Avella, and visual artists Luis Arroyo, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Esperanza Mayobre, Marco Montiel Soto, Lucía Pizzani, and Christian Vinck.