Beauty of Oil at the Conjectural Futures Conference 2022, Nov. 17/18 Potsdam
Commissioned and hosted by foresight departments at Evonik and Deutsche Bahn and co-curated by Beauty of Oil-member and speculative designer Bernd Hopfengärtner, the conference took place in a beautiful building in Potsdam, the former “Kaiserbahnhof” at the south end of the palace gardens of Sans Soucis. Beauty of Oil-member and cultural researcher Alexander Klose was invited to give a talk on petromodernity and BoO’s activities as opener of the conference’s second session “Tipping Scales – tracing links from particle to planet”.
Here’s what Bernd Hopfengärtner wrote as introduction to this session: “Sometimes, the biggest changes take place in the smallest details. In the 19th century, organic chemistry discovered fossil hydrocarbons, the basic building blocks of petromodernity. The consequences of this discovery – the unleashed availability of energy and the ability to shape material into basically any form – still make up our reality: leisure, freedom, division of labour, nutrition, knowledge society and Tupperware parties on the one hand; geopolitical conflicts, exploitation of people, natural disasters and climate change on the other. What the historical mobilisation of hydrocarbons was to energy and materials, the emerging manipulation of quantum states might be to information, or the designability of genetic functions to life.
A petro-modern perspective on the history and present shows us how important it is to look for connecting lines between the very small and the very large. What does this perspective tell us about current future technologies? How can we imagine the implications of bio and quantum technologies? What approaches and tools can we use?” (conference program)
And here’s the abstract of Klose’s talk: “Molecular mobilization and molecular history—the accumulative powers of the very small entities in machines and in societies—go hand in hand and reach planetary dimensions in the petromodern era. Its dynamics are composed by the hard powers of science and technology, industry and economics, as well as the soft powers of habits and pretensions, thoughts and beliefs. It is an era of excess: In order to understand what we might have to leave behind, we should not only study energy production and scenarios of scarcity but also consumerism and the promises of abundant lifestyles. If we don’t consider the latter, the molecular dynamics of petromodernity will prevail, even without petroleum.”
Petromodernity and its Tenacities, download presentation here.