Copper and gold extractions involve huge-scale land reformation with heavy machines and labor under large corporations. While both elements are known for their uses in the electronics industry and gold in jewelry and finances, the two minerals actively contribute to a rising yet less informed field – advanced medical technologies. The physical configuration of the Cananea mine pit implies social aggregation in human society. While miners work under a hazardous condition that destroys their health, in particular the lung and respiratory system, the extracted products go through a network of manufacture and become advanced medical instruments that diagnose and treat diseases in a much more efficient way. Health becomes a commodity. Technological apparatus is our new intimacy, in that our born bodies interconnect with exo-bodies made from the products of extractive taskscapes. Our project envisions an oxygen bar that brings mineral products and their advanced uses back to miners and their families’ daily lives, through activities such as breathing, eating, and socializing.
