»The chemical industry knows no waste«, claims an industry propaganda film from the GDR in 1968. Today, the whole Earth seems to have been turned into a planetary plastic waste heap. Thus, the statement sounds weird. Nevertheless, it carries some reasonability in a country and economy relying on stewardship of its scarce resources. Doesn’t that also sound familiar? A good twenty years earlier, a US propaganda film for its war-boosted chemical industry preparing to become civic again had announced that the depicted “world of the molecule belongs to us all. It is yours to explore, your new frontier.”
GDR propaganda poster for the anti-fascist socialist chemical industry, 1960
The plastic turn had a utopian potential that actualized in different political ideologies. From a certain historical point, to be modern meant to be living in plasticized environments. But the problem with plastics, one may assume, was not caused mainly by its “supernatural” materiality, but by the social and economical organization of its distribution. Consumerism was the civil religion of the American century. Also the socialist regimes gave in to it as a means of manifesting freedom and prosperity in a modern society. That may have been one major nail in their coffin, as a communist idealist might argue. It certainly was another milestone in the advent of the plastocene.
The talk traced the course from plastic crazes in West and East to today’s global plastic waste crises and further to queer and square plastic futures.
The talk took place on the first day of the three-day-symposium Wast3D-Care, on friday july 8, at 5:30 pm. Festival and symposium Wasteland were conceptualized and organized by Yannik Güldner & Leon Lapa Pereira.
time:
July 8, 5:30 pm
location:
The Grey Space in the Middle
Paviljoensgracht 20
2512 BP, The Hague
The Netherlands
Demonstrating the basics of a chemical cultural theory. Photos by Xue Mu.
Still from Deepwater Horizon, motion picture, USA 2016
Thinking about the roles images play in the production of knowledge around anthropogenic damage to ecosystems, one stumbles into a meshwork of contradictory relations. Principally, it is possible to distinguish between two different categories of images: those about situations of extraction/destruction (with images of disasters being the most popular) and those brought forward or made by the situations themselves. The latter is a relatively new (or newly recognized) type of images that Susan Schuppli refers to as ‘dirty pictures’, a way in which “anthropogenic environments are documenting their own damaged condition.”Both types of images share a problematic condition: as they formulate a critique of extraction, destruction, and pollution, they are also a part of or the result of the circumstances they depict. In the following text I will concentrate on image-making related to the extraction and uses of oil (and the products it is used to produce) as being probably the most important and momentous of all anthropogenic substances shaping the contemporary condition of the earth. I will track some of these contradictory constellations and try to elaborate an understanding of the dialectical yet calamitous dynamics associated with producing these images.
a visit to the Wiess Energy Hall at the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS)
Downtown Houston from the innermost of the five highway belts. All images and videos in this post by alexclose.
Visiting the ‘Petro Metro’ on invitation by Popup Goethe’s director Grant Aymond, I get the chance to meet Daniel Minisini in person. He is a geologist working for Shell, and in his spare time he hosts an interview series at the local free radio station KPFT Houston directed mainly at the geologists and oil engineers working in Houston. [But via his Youtube Channel also to critical petromodernity researcher all over the world.] In the beginning of 2021 he had interviewed Benjamin and me via zoom.
When Daniel heard of my planned trip to Houston, he suggested a couple of places that I should definitely visit, among them the Wiess Energy Hall at the HMNS. The department, which has been completely remade for the bargain price of 42 Mio US$ and reopened in 2018, is dedicated to the physical aspects of a phenomenon that carries metaphysical proportions: energy, and its live-creating, live-sustaining powers.
In Houston, the world capital of oil, this comes down to a narrative almost thoroughly dedicated to the geological, technological, and—to some extent—social aspects of the exploration, production, refinement and consumption of petroleum.
The line-up of sponsors is a who-is-who of the oil business:
One can go down into the depths of the earth inside an enlarged, space capsule-like drillhead until striking oil. It feels like inside a shaky elevator with an overdimensional floor display:
Almost the same scenario is offered a second time, this time we travel horizontally over the land near Houston, than underneath it, in a spaceship-like fracking device:
Mentions of the problematic aspects of tough, unvonventional oil, about the damages done and the civil protests? None. The exhibition is a celebration of the achievements and perspectives of the “unconventional revolution” (as Daniel told me, the technologies of fracking and the like are referred to within the industry).
Oh, wait a second, here’s a critical passage dedicated to the possibility that it might be necessary in the future to step away from fossils towards other fuels:
Remarkable, though, that the striking argument is purely financial.
It’s not hard to find professional coverage of this feat on the internet, though, for instance here, on the Museum’s Website.
After a lunch presentation of our work with Beauty of Oil I gave the next day at the architecture faculty hall of Rice University, a distinguished professor and member of the RDA (Rice Design Alliance) asked me, what i would answer to the critique that we have just changed the pictures within but not the museum itself with our OIL-exhibition at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. Given, that I had not seen a hint of a critical reflection of the oil legacy in all the impressing, shiny, and flashy museum landscape of Houston (with absolutely fantastic ensembles as the Cy Twombly Gallery in the Menil Collection and other top rate shows and collections dedicated mainly to classic modernity—meaning, the heydays of petromodernity), and also given, that I did get no answer whatsoever to my questions for an official critical discourse on petromodernity in the artworld or elsewhere from my academic audience at Rice, this fundamental critique seemed to be rather odd.
What might it feel like to live in New York City after fossil fuels?
One year later as planned and only with the help of an NIE (National Interest Exception) they are finally happening with Alexander Klose physically in New York City, and together with New York-based speculative designer Chris Woebken: three successive precognitioning sessions taking place on Oct 28/29/30 at tenfourteen. space for ideas, 1014 5th Avenue, New York, NY!
Collage by Adeline Chum, Jules Kleitman, Aditi Mangesh Shetye, 2021
The fossil energy regime of coal, oil and gas has to and will end eventually, coal rolling and the renewed celebration of excessive fossil fuel consumption having been merely petromelancholic rebound effects… This is the backdrop for our ongoing research project on the histories and afterlives of petromodernity. How do we want to live in a post-fossil future? How and with whom will we develop new kinships after the social bonds connected to the resource economy and the exuberant promises of our ‘Western Way of Life’ are untied? Will we actively delve into a world of living materials and microbiological entanglements? Will we get beyond racism and patriarchy? Will we cease to privately own land?
Join us at one of three successive precognitioning sessions at 1014! Play out visions of urban renewal, societal reformation, and a post-extractivist approach towards natures and societies after the possible endings of fossil energy regimes.
Collage by Tashania Akemah , 2021
Through narrative techniques and design futures methods a series of bespoke design interventions and immersive installations transform 1014 into a hyper-reality testing environment. Using guided speculative role play and co-created moments of immersion, participants are encouraged to experiment with new values and beliefs that might emerge in a post-petro world. The scenarios and installations have been developed in collaboration with an architecture course at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, led by participatory futures practitioner Chris Woebken in partnership with cultural researcher Alexander Klose.
The idea of precognition: Being neither driven by big corporations nor by governments, the precognition process takes up the project of working with and on futures in an explicitly non-technocratic, experimental way. It avoids statistics-based “scientific” methodologies. Instead, it relies on collectively crafted visions and material-based artifacts and embodied roleplay. An archeology of the fossil presence: surveying infrastructures, collecting images and narratives that at the same time manifest all kinds of afterlives and hint to possible escape routes.
You’re invited to join us as a participant on one of the evenings Oct 28, Oct 29, Oct 30. In two groups of max 15 people, visitors will walk through the installations and the precognitioning process accompanied byAlexander Kloseand Chris Woebken and different ‘lead speculators’ from varying fields of practice and knowledge for each evening. We will explore and respond to new precognitioned values, myths, and cultural imaginations that might emerge while being shaped by the afterlives of petro-modernity.
Thursday 10/28, 6:30 – 9 pm with lead speculators Dan Taeyoung and Dr. Elizabeth Hénaff
Friday 10/29, 6:30 – 9 pm with lead speculators Aristilde Kirby and Frank Morales
Saturday 10/30, 6:30 – 9 pm with lead speculators Ayodamola Okunseinde and Ben Holbrook
For more information on the lead speculators scroll down.
Precognitioning Post-Oil is realized in cooperation with GSAPP Columbia University
Dr. Elizabeth Hénaff is a computational biologist with an art practice. Her academic trajectory started with a Bachelors in Computer Science, followed by a Master’s in Plant Biology (both from UT Austin) and a PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Barcelona. At the center of her work is a fascination with the way living beings interact with their environment. This inquiry has produced a body of work that ranges from scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, to projects with landscape architects, to working as an artist in environments from SVA to the MIT Media Lab. She has made contributions to understanding how plants respond to the force of gravity, how genome structure changes in response to stress, and most recently has turned her attention to the ubiquitous and invisible microbial component of our environment. She currently holds an Assistant Professor position in the Technology, Culture and Society department at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering in New York City.
Ben Holbrook is a Brooklyn-based (originally from NC) playwright and filmmaker whose works have been produced, developed, or commissioned by: Fundamental Theater Project, Ruddy Productions, The New York International Fringe Festival, The Memphis Fringe Festival, The Motor Company, Voices of the South (TN), Ugly Rhino(LA), Seoul Players (SK), Holiday House, Find the Light (LA), The Irish Arts Council, 45th Street Block Association, and Paper Lantern Theatre Company (NC). His films have been seen at the Big Apple Film Festival, The Imaginarium Convention, The Comedy of Horrors Festival, The Sickest Short Films Festival, and The Films Open Mic Festival. He’s been awarded the Edward Albee Foundation fellowship, the Drama League Rough Draft Residency (partnering with Sam Underwood), Fresh Ground Pepper’s Playground Playgroup Residency, The New Concepts Theatre Lab at UNC-Greensboro, Magic Time at Judson Church, and is the inaugural recipient of the Peter Shaffer Award for Excellence in Playwriting. Ben is also the co-owner of Full Metal Workshop.
Aristilde Kirby (she/they, b. 1991) is a poet, like the play of the ripples on the water. Daisy & Catherine², her latest chapbook, is out in November via Auric Press. Past works include Daisy & Catherine (Belladonna, 2017) & Sonnet Infinitesimal / Material Girl (Black Warrior Review & Best American Experimental Writing 2020). She has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing from Bard College. You can just call her Aris, like Paris without the P.
Frank Morales
Episcopal Priest, Writer and Housing Activist
Frank Morales is a legendary New York City housing activist, a radical Episcopalian priest who has been squatting in the South Bronx and on the Lower East Side since 1978. Morales was the housing organizer for Picture the Homeless, a homeless-led grassroots group that developed a multipronged program of direct action to secure housing for homeless people, alongside groups like Miami’s Take Back the Land.
Morales currently co-leads Organizing for Occupation, a group of New York City residents from the activist, academic, religious, homeless, arts, and progressive legal communities who have come together to respond to the housing crisis. The group believes that safe and affordable housing is a human right and that, given the failure of government and the private sector to address the crisis, it is up to those who are most directly affected by it to secure that right through nonviolent direct action. The group intends to create housing through the occupation of vacant spaces and to protect people’s right to remain in existing housing through community-based anti-eviction campaigns.
Ayodamola Okunseinde
Nigerian-American Artist, Designer, Anthropologist and Time-traveler
Okunseinde studied Visual Arts and Philosophy at Rutgers University where he earned his B.A. His works range from painting and speculative design to physically interactive works, wearable technology, and explorations of “Reclamation”. He was nominated for the 2021 inaugural Knight Art + Tech Fellowship and is a 2021 fellow of the Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography & Social Thought. His works exist between physical and digital spaces; across the past, present and future. Okunseinde’s works ask us, via a technological lens, to reimagine notions of race, identity, politics, and culture as we travel through time and space. He holds an M.F.A. in Design and Technology and an M.A. in Anthropology from The New School. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at The New School for Social Research and serves as an Assistant Professor of Interaction and Media Design at Parsons School of Design.
Dan Taeyoung is a learner, facilitator, spatial designer, and technologist. His practice involves around collaborating to create architectural spaces and social collectives that embody how we might want to live together, as well as researching design and social tools that change the way we work together. He teaches at Columbia University GSAPP and NYU IDM; is a founding member of Soft Surplus, a co-founder of Prime Produce, a guild for social good, the NYC REIC, an real estate investment cooperative working towards anti-displacement and community land ownership.
Mit 150, pandemiepolitikbedingt in der Teilnehmerzahl beschränkten und im Vorfeld registrierten Gästen eröffnete am Freitag, 3.9.2021, um 19:00 Uhr endlich unsere große Erdölausstellung, auf die wir seit 2016 hingearbeitet haben. Anwesend waren Bürgermeister und andere Würdenträger aus Wolfsburg und der Region, aber auch viele Freunde und Freundinnen aus Berlin, Wien, und anderswo. Die Reaktionen sowohl auf unsere Einführungsrede als auch auf die Ausstellung waren freundlich bis begeistert. Nachdem wir schon am Abend zuvor mit den eigens für unsere Ausstellung angereisten Künstler_innen Gunhild Vatn, Wes Bell und Joep van Lieshout bis in den späten Abend im Foyer des Museums geredet und gezecht hatten, setzten wir dies am Eröffnungsabend entschlossen dortselbst und im abgebildeten Eingangsbereich zwischen den heute obligatorischen Urban Gardening-Paletten fort. Es war schön.
Pressekonferenz, Fotos: Marek Kruszewski, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
Bereits am Donnerstag zur Pressekonferenz hatte sich ein großes Interesse und hoffentlich entsprechend großes Medienecho angekündigt. Fernsehteams von NDR, 3Sat und ZDF Heutejournal waren da, ebenso Radioleute und Vertreter_innnen diverser regionaler und überregionaler Zeitungen. Hier folgt eine Auflistung aller bislang erschienenen und gesendeten Beiträge (von denen wir etwas mitbekommen haben):
Das Buch fungiert einerseits als Katalog, aber auch als bleibender Beitrag zur Petrokulturforschung mit weit mehr als den in der Ausstellung befindlichen Werken und Forschungsbeiträgen internationaler Expert*innen, deutsche und englische Ausgabe, je 400 Seiten, ca. 450 Abbildungen, Gestaltung Jan Kiesswetter, mit einem Vorwort von Andreas Beitin, einer Einleitung von Alexander Klose und Benjamin Steininger und Texten von Akintunde Akinleye, Leila Alieva, Dominic Boyer, Jan von Brevern, Heather Davis, Elena Engelbrechter, Christoph Engemann, Timothy Furstnau, Eckhart Gillen, Rüdiger Graf, Helmut Höge, Bernhard Hopfengärtner, Isabel J. Piniella Grillet, Karen Pinkus, Christian Schwarke, Suwarno Wisetrotomo und Susanne Witzgall), 39 EUR im Museumsshop und auf kunstmuseum.de
The book operates as a catalogue, but at the same time is meant to be a lasting contribution to petrocultural research with a lot more than the artistic works shown in the exhibition and essays by international experts, German and English edition, each 400 pages, approx. 450 illustrations, design by Jan Kiesswetter, with a foreword by Andreas Beitin, an introduction by Alexander Klose and Benjamin Steininger, and texts by Akintunde Akinleye, Leila Alieva, Dominic Boyer, Jan von Brevern, Heather Davis, Elena Engelbrechter, Christoph Engemann, Timothy Furstnau, Eckhart Gillen, Rüdiger Graf, Helmut Höge, Bernd Hopfengärtner, Isabel Piniella, Karen Pinkus, Christian Schwarke, Suwarno Wisetrotomo, and Susanne Witzgall, 39 EUR at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and at kunstmuseum.de.
We have been working on this project for more than five years. An exhibition about petromodernities around the world and how they have been reflected by artistic works. Its preparation at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg—in the lion’s den next to the headquarters of VW and indirectly financed by this world leading car manufacturing company—has been interrupted and delayed by severe incidents: the unforeseen replacement of the museum’s director, the restrictions of a pandemic….
But now it is really going to happen! The first retrospective of petromodern art. Opening Sat, Sept. 4th.
With: Monira Al Qadiri, Ana Alenso, Francis Alÿs, Yuri Ancarani, Qiu Anxiong, Atelier van Lieshout, Kader Attia, Serge Attukwei Clottey, Klaus Auderer, Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck & Media Farzin, Lothar Baumgarten, Jennifer-Jane Bayliss, Wes Bell, Uwe Belz, Claus Bergen, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ursula Biemann, Vanessa Billy, Brett Bloom, Mark Boulos, Margaret Bourke-White, Bureau d’Etudes, Edward Burtynsky, Warren Cariou, Christo, Tony Cragg, Walter De Maria, Mark Dion, Gerardo Dottori, Sokari Douglas Camp, Rena Effendi, William Eggleston, Hans Fischerkoesen, Sylvie Fleury, John Gerrard, Christoph Girardet, Claus Goedicke, Tue Greenfort, Carl Grossberg, Monika Grzymala, Robert Gschwantner, Hans Haacke, Ernst Haeckel, Eberhard Havekost, Romuald Hazoumè, Armin Herrmann, John Heartfield, Michael Hirschbichler, Bernhard Hopfengärtner, Murad Ibragimbekov, Aaditi Joshi, Peter Keetman, Matt Kenyon, Tetsumi Kudo, Ernst Logar, Mark Lombardi, Ellen Karin Mæhlum, Rémy Markowitsch, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Paul Michaelis, Kay Michalak & Sven Völker, Richard Misrach, Michael Najjar, Hugo Niebeling, Franz Nolde, Kate Orff, George Osodi, Alex Prager, Alain Resnais, Oliver Ressler, Martha Rosler, Miguel Rothschild, Ed Ruscha, Shirin Sabahi, Santiago Sierra, Taryn Simon, Andreas Slominski, Robert Smithson, Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger, Thomas Struth, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Wolfgang Tillmans, Gunhild Vatn, Wolf Vostell, Entang Wiharso, Erwin Wurm, Yuts
Find here the german exhibition folder, downloadable as pdf. An english description of the exhibition can be accessed through the link on the bottom of the page.
Öffentlicher Vortrag der Klasse Klima, UdK Berlin, mit Alexander Klose
Die Petromoderne ist die durch Kulturtechniken des Erdöls und anderer fossiler Ressourcen geprägte Kultur unserer Zeit. Gehen wir davon aus, dass es mit ihr ein baldiges Ende hat. Was wird von ihr bleiben? In welchen Formen wird sie explizit und implizit weiterleben? In welchen Formen wird man sich zukünftig auf sie beziehen?
Der Kunsthistoriker Aby Warburg hat für das Überdauern antiker und archaischer Bildprogramme in der Kunst der Neuzeit den Begriff des Nachlebens geprägt. Dieser Sicht zugrunde liegt die Vorstellung von einer evolutionären Kulturentwicklung. Der Vorteil einer solchen Auffassung von Kulturgeschichte liegt aus heutiger Sicht darin, dass sie es erlaubt, kultur- und naturhistorische Phänomene analog zu behandeln. Denn eine der zentralen Erkenntnisse des Anthropozän-Denkens besteht darin, dass die lange für unser Weltbild konstitutive, grundsätzlich Trennung zwischen “Natur”- und “Kultur”- Machen weder ethisch noch im Lichte wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse noch haltbar ist.
Die manifest materiellen Hinterlassenschaften der Petromoderne – die Hinterlassenschaften von Tankerhavarien, geplatzten Pipelines, zerstörten Bohrplattformen, von gigantischen Verkehrsinfrastrukturen, vor allem aber CO2 und Mikroplastik – werden für Jahrtausende in den Ozeanen, in der Atmosphäre, auf der Erdoberfläche und in den Böden verbleiben. Sie werden die Biosphäre des Planeten nach menschlich-historischen Maßstäben für eine signifikant lange Dauer verändert haben. Wie aber steht es mit den weniger materiellen kulturellen Elementen unserer Zeit, den Verhaltensweisen, sozialen Organisationsformen, Glaubens- und Begehrensstrukturen? Wie wird man sich auf sie zukünftig beziehen? In welchem Verhältnis stehen sie zu den Monumenten petrochemischer Produktion und Mobilität und welche Rollen könnten diese spielen?
Anhand existierender Beispiele für petromoderne Kulturerbestätten und anhand der Entwürfe der Teilnehmer*innen der Klasse Klima diskutiert Alexander Klose in seinem Vortrag Szenarien zukünftiger Erinnerungs- bzw. Verdrängungskultur.
