Episode 14: “All the Way to Hell”: Mineral Rights Between Art and Activism

Logo for Eliza Evans’ All the Way to Hell LLC (2020-ongoing)

Posted Date: January 28, 2021

Episode Description: In Episode 14, “‘All the Way to Hell’: Mineral Rights Between Art and Activism,” Hannah Matangos and Merve Tabur interview visual artist and activist Eliza Evans. Evans introduces her activist-art project “All the Way to Hell,” which aims to draw attention to fossil fuel development on private land in the U.S. by giving away mineral rights to participants. In addition to discussing the purpose and reception of the project, Evans, Hannah, and Merve also have a conversation about the history and legal aspects of mineral rights in Oklahoma.

Guest Biography

Photo of Eliza Evans by Vishaka Gupta

Born in a rustbelt steel town and raised in rural Appalachia, Eliza Evans experiments with construction materials, plastic, trees, wire, electronics, data, and bureaucracy to tease out the impact of past events on current circumstances and to let the future unfold unscripted. Evans holds an MFA from SUNY Purchase in visual art and a PhD in economic sociology from the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been exhibited in Santa Fe, Austin, Portland OR, and New York. She is also a Bronx Museum AIM fellow.  One of her current projects is “All the Way to Hell,” which seeks to disrupt fossil fuel development on private land in the United States.

 

 

Project Title: All the Way to Hell 

Description: The activist art project All the Way to Hell is recruiting artists, activists, and humans from anywhere in the US to help disrupt fracking on a small property in Oklahoma.

Eliza Evans, “All the Way to Hell,” 2020-ongoing. Well core sample and quitclaim mineral deed.

All the Way to Hell is giving away mineral rights to as many people as possible. This aggressive fragmentation of the property will inhibit fossil fuel interest in it. It costs oil and gas developers just as much to acquire large properties as it does small properties—they have to track down owners, negotiate leases, and file documents with the county clerk and the state. The aim is to make mineral rights as inconvenient and expensive to acquire as possible.

Mineral rights may be the most powerful, racialized, and inequitable form of property in the United States. Through mass participation, All the Way to Hell seeks to use the privilege and power of mineral ownership against itself to resist fossil fuel extraction.

All the Way to Hell converts hundreds of individual gestures into a new form of environmental resistance at the intersection of property law, fossil fuel business practice, and bureaucracy. It is a framework for a 100-year sit-in.

Note: For the next phase of the project, Evans is currently researching another mineral property in Pennsylvania.

Connect with Eliza Evans and get involved in All the Way to Hell:

Eliza Evans, “Transpiration,” 2017, site specific installation at Purchase College, SUNY. Tree limbs, hardware, plastic wrap, twine.

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