Rare Earth explores the material consequences of our digital age. The term ‘rare earth’ refers to the mineral elements used to make electronics, magnets, and US military weapons systems. This project investigates the extraction of rare earth material from Mountain Pass Mine, the only rare earth mine in the United States. Mountain Pass Mine is an increasingly complicated landscape located in the Mojave Desert that produces roughly 15% of the world’s rare earth annually. The mine began small-scale operations in 1952 but changed hands and closed multiple times due to economic strife. It re-opened in 2018 after China limited the production of rare earth because of high environmental costs, creating the rare earth crisis of 2010-2014. Initially, when re-opening, much of the material was still shipped to China to undergo the toxic separation process. In 2022, the United States Department of Defense awarded MP Materials $35 million to build a separation facility to keep the entire processing of rare earth within the states. This speaks to the complicated geopolitical relationships between land and technology.
The video and textile piece (Im)material (2025) utilizes the high desert landscape surrounding Mountain Pass Mine to dye prepared fabric with the soil containing rare earth minerals. Throughout the video, the viewer is confronted with found footage of Mountain Pass Mine sourced from news outlets and Google Earth alongside footage of the textile dyeing process taking place with Mountain Pass as the backdrop. The footage is accompanied by a greenwashing corporate voice narrating the operation of rare earth mining. The marketing of new technologies often positions them as post-carbon, efficient, and green. This is hyper-evident in the audio’s omnipresent voice, which links the dyeing process to the extractive practice of mining and highlights the materiality of the landscape.
The photographic tableaux are arranged using the dyed fabric from (Im)material as a backdrop and they explore the history of Mountain Pass Mine, the marketing of ‘green’ energy, and the political and militaristic goals of extactive sites. In making each tableau, I began by mining images from the internet–sourcing from press releases, marketing materials, and news sites. I recontextualize them through fragmentation and reconstruction, collaging them with images made on location, objects of technology, QR codes, rare earth soil from Mountain Pass, greenscreen, and military patterning. Each material highlights the intersections between the mine and our digital lives and investigates how technology is positioned as a clean resource in our collective consciousness while implicated in military advancement.
- Lopez, Todd. “DOD Looks to Establish ‘mine-to-Magnet’ Supply Chain for Rare Earth Materials.” U.S. Department of Defense, March 11, 2024. https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3700059/dod-looks-to-establish-mine-to-magnet-supply-chain-for-rare-earth-materials/.
- “What We Do.” MP Materials. Accessed March 26, 2025. https://mpmaterials.com/what-we-do/.
- Majcher, Kristin. “What Happened to the Rare-Earths Crisis?” MIT Technology Review, August 22, 2024. https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/02/25/169038/what-happened-to-the-rare-earths-crisis/#:~:text=A%202010%20U.S.%20Department%20of,seemingly%20dissipated%20without%20much%20fanfare.
- Klinger, Rare Earth Frontiers. 4.
- “DoD Awards $35 Million to MP Materials to Build U.S. Heavy Rare Earth Separation Capacity.” US Department of Defense, February 22, 2022. United States Government. https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2941793/dod-awards-35-million-to-mp-materials-to-build-us-heavy-rare-earth-separation-c/.