Abstract
Keynote talk. Studying the alpaca wool supply chain for ethical and sustainable fashions and the cochineal pigment industry—were indigenous knowledges and labor are central—the materiality of media provided a support to center the politics of matter. A multimodal approach to color and textures became an analytical and methodological tool to explore how aesthetic and ethical ideals configure ecological relations tied to the material demands of more-than-human worlds, indigenous knowledges, and notions of sustainability and conservation part of some capitalist industries. This approach helps account for indigenous knowledges and material ontologies, emphasizing their felt presence even if they are not known or meant to be known, offering a way to engage with ethnographic refusals and avoid reproducing extractive methods in research and creative production.