Europium

The video installation Europium by the media artist Lisa Rave (*1979) takes a look at the element europium. This is a rare earth with fluorescent properties, used to manufacture colour displays for smartphones and other sreens to ensure the genuineness of euro banknotes.
At multiple visual levels, the video examines the links between the planned extraction of raw materials in Bismarck Sea and the colonial past of Papua New Guines, whre europium is to be raised from offshore sea bed.
Through her wok the artist exposes the invisible ghosts of the past that appear in modern items in our lives and leads us to question the devices into which we gaze every day.