This research is dedicated to the property of copper as a raw material with specific properties and as a vehicule of the industrial development  – conducting electricity – of modernity. Its conductive properties are also understood as a metaphor of the conducts and behaviour of the West towards the countries in which this material is extracted, produced and used. The research, realised by the means of art, is the outcome of a collaboration with other researchers, artists and theoreticians. It integrates the fields of history, political and economic sciences, postcolonial studies, history/theory of art as well as art practices. The book addresses such issues as the conductivity and conduct through raw materials (Ingrid Wili Merino); the notion of economic extractivism addressed through the perspective of epistemic and ontological extractivism, as a way of being in the world (Ramón Grosfoguel); a re-reading of the history of electricity through copper, as a critique of the progress (Marta Jordi); the meaning of Humanity in the era of networks? (Sergio Rojas); the effects of extractionism and coloniality on urban-architectonic deterritorialisation (Yasser Farres); the story of the material: from the coal (in Manifesta 9, biennial of Contemporary Art, Genk, Limburg, Belgium, 2012 ) to the copper circuit ( Cuauhtémoc Medina).
The study is taking a historical, political, economic perspective to understand the conceptual connection betveen the development of the copper trade as a means of industrial and capitalist development, and the effects on the territories that contain copper. The violence of the extraction techniques on indigenous people affects the author of this research Conductivity and conduct through raw materials, Ingrid Wildi Merino born in Chili, whose mother, lives in Arica, in the far north region, precisely where the largest copper mines that supply world technology demands are situated.

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