//ABSTRACT// What connections could be made between embodied desires and the spirals of open-pit mining? «Copper Tales» is an installation that approaches the mining operation through the sensitive bodies that participate in it. Based on the site of the Rio Tinto mines (Spain) crossed by an acid river, the project puts in relation different actors contributing to the extraction of raw materials. The traces -archaeological, geological, human, bacterial- marked on the grounds are projected together in a narrative to come. //DEVELOPMENT// «Copper Tales» is based on the copper extraction site of the Rio Tinto mines in Spain. Starting from the idea that raw materials are extracted to satisfy our embodied desires, I approach these operations through the living. How are our bodies connected with the extraction of ore? Río Tinto, the red river leaving the mines, is the starting point of my project. Its colour is the result of bacterial activity due to the extraction. Several temporal layers interact on the place. The ore extraction site has been in operation since the Roman Empire. In 1888, the miners demonstrated against the English company that owned the mines by means of a strike, resulting in violent repression. In 2015, the CAB (Centro de Astrobiología) and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) hypothesised the presence of river-like bacteria on Mars and began analyses. In the meantime, human bones were found at the extraction site, which became an archaeological site. The project is an installation consisting of a book, a structure, videos and prints. In the book «Thrice Happy if they know their happiness and persevere upright», temporal and spatial traces created by human and non human bodies in the site interact together. For example, an allegorical representation of Perseverance enters in a dialogue with the actual search in the Rio Tinto mines and river of NASA and CAB. Perseverance is both an allegorical figure near a river, the name of the rover going to Mars, and the attitude of the human digging further and further until reaching other planets. The face of Swati Mohan commenting the Perseverance landing on Mars is linked with the first classified representation of miners in western countries in an engraving from the 16th century. These various traces project this extraction site into the exploration of space and into a perpetual quest for raw materials. The satellite image in the back of the book is the model for the sculpture in the center of the installation. It represents the extracted materials placed upside down. By this inversion, one can contemplate the project from the inside. From the underground. The invisible interior. In the videos, these elements are made sensitive and alive through my body filmed on site, linked to the point of view of the bacteria. In «Copper», I wanted to make the remaining ore and living being resonate with these histories. I am looking for a sound, for a dialogue. «Perseverance», explores the point of view of the non human: the bacteriae which survive in the river. This video enters into a dialogue with Acidithiobacillus, two pictures made by the bacteriae on a photographic silver film. These two moving images interact finally with «Trace», a video where we can see me waiting for a cast of my vulva to dry. Through this action, I bring a new trace of a body to the exploited land in a gesture of healing. In conclusion, through my project I hope to have brought sensitive bodies back into the extraction of raw materials. //VIDEOS// link: https://lisamazenauer.com/copper-tales password: blurringthelines2022