It is a pleasure to announce the publication of the American edition of our »Atlas« – updated and extended version with a new foreword by Stephanie LeMenager and a new long closing chapter (‘Zombie’) on the Ukraine war and the still not closed case of petromodern destruction.
We stroll through Baku, Rotterdam, and Louisiana, into Manchuria and through the Vienna Basin. We read Bertolt Brecht, technical manuals, and petroculture theory, and we listen to Neil Young. We go to the moon, through refineries and over highways emptied by the COVID-19 pandemic. We confront petrochemistry with petromelancholy, catalysis with catharsis, cosmos with cosmetics. The Atlas of Premodernity tackles the contradictory ambivalences of a substance that has been vital for our epoch, and whose roles and meanings need to be understood in order to be able to leave this epoch behind.
»#1 New Release in Petroleum Engineering« at Amazon (whatever this means, let’s keep it there!)
Alles fängt mit den Aktivitäten im und um den Boden an und mit dem direkten und indirekten Zuströmen der Energie der Sonne. Beileibe nicht zum ersten Mal wird es heute als krisenhaft empfunden. Dass Landwirtschaft, Kultur und Gesellschaft aufs Engste zusammenhängen, zeigen die auf einer „crazy wall“ versammelten Bilder der Landwirtschaft aus mehreren Jahrtausenden. Nichts hat in dieser langen Geschichte so weitreichende Folgen gezeitigt wie die Industrialisierung. Wie viel fossile Energie steckt in heutigen landwirtschaftlichen Produkten? Auf einer „detective wall“ zur Stickstoff-Verschwörung können Sie einigen zentralen Zusammenhängen dieser Veränderungen auf die Schliche kommen. In einem Pflanzregal im ersten Stock schließlich begegnen sich die Spur des Traktors – die auch auf das Schlachtfeld führt –, ein Kulturpflanzen-Quartett, die „glokale“ Geschichte des Zuckers und die historische Dynamik von Kollektivierung und Kapitalisierung.
English translation of our Atlas by Ayça Türkoğlu, updated and enlarged edition with a new introduction by Stephanie LeMenager and a new concluding chapter, »Zombie«, on the still not closed case of petromodern destruction. In print and open access!
“The Atlas of Petromodernity offers us the chance to be a flaneur within its distinctively curated and therefore somewhat realistic world. Enter at your own risk, with the affinity for risk that may well define you, even still.” Stephanie LeMenager
For more details on publication, dates, and availability see here: punctumbooks.com
Kalte Asche und Petromelancholie. Energie ist nicht nur, was aus Leitungen kommt. Energieformen prägen Kulturformen – in ihrer materiellen Gestalt wie in ihren Denkmöglichkeiten. Darüber hinaus ist »energeia« seit Aristoteles eine Wirkkraft, die ein Potenzielles ins Sein bringt, etwas vor Augen führen kann – und damit eine genuin poetologische Kategorie. Was bedeutet es für die Literatur als energetische Kunst, dass sich ein Abschied von den Fossilkulturen abzeichnet?
Zu diesen Fragen fanden am 17.1.2024 zwei Diskussionsrunden im Brecht-Haus Berlin statt, eingeleitet von Steffen Richter. (mehr Infos)
17:30, Alexander Klose / Benjamin Steininger, »Petromoderne Permanenz und Wiederkehr«, Impulsvortrag und Gespräch mit Birgit Schneider.
20:00, »Energiekämpfe in der Gegenwart«. Mit Burkhard Spinnen (»Rückwind«, 2019), Susanne Stephan (»Der Held und seine Heizung. Brennstoffe der Literatur«, 2023) und Theresa Hannig (»Pantopia«, 2022). Moderation Matthias Bertsch.
Screenshots vom youtube video stream
Video der gesamten Veranstaltung:
Ein dichter und inspirierender Einführungstext zur Veranstaltung von Steffen Richter, der am 16.01.2024 im tagesspiegel erschienen ist, kann hier abgerufen werden.
Seit dem russischen Krieg in der Ukraine ist sie Thema politischer, ökonomischer und kultureller Debatten: Energie. Sabotierte Pipelines, gebrochene Staudämme und beschossene Atomkraftwerke machen die Verletzlichkeit unserer Energieinfrastrukturen greifbar – und die unserer gesamten energieintensiven Lebensform. Das fossile Zeitalter hat Karbon- und Petromoderne ermöglicht und weitreichende Freiheitsroutinen etabliert. Zugleich aber untergräbt es unsere Lebensgrundlagen. Damit überlagern sich die vom Krieg angefachten Diskussionen über Versorgungssicherheit mit Debatten, die seit langem über die Notwendigkeit einer postfossilen Kultur geführt werden. Energieformen nämlich prägen Kulturformen. Und Geschichte lässt sich immer schon als Geschichte von Energiewenden und Konflikten zwischen Energieregimen lesen. Diese Ausgabe der Zeitschrift »Dritte Natur. Technik – Kapital – Umwelt« widmet sich in ihrem Schwerpunkt verschiedenen Facetten von Energiekulturen – etwa dem Energiemanagement der Finanzmärkte, autofreien Sonntagen in der alten Bundesrepublik oder Windradromanen der Gegenwartsliteratur.
Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck – Last oil barrel, date postponed
Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck – Last oil barrel – detail
Diann Bauer – Prologue: Politics as Palliative Care of the Species, 2019 – Video 11:20 min. + XFAST, 2019 – Introductory video for ‘If Nature is Unjust, Change Nature’ talk, 5:20 min
Jan Eric Visser – Untitled, 2023, #1+2
Jan Eric Visser – Untitled, 2023, #3
Jan Eric Visser – Untitled, 2023, #4
Yuri Ancarani – The Challenge, 2016 – Video 70 min
All photos by Aad Hoogendorn, if not mentioned otherwise
All the artworks in the show – Chapter 4: Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet (8 slides)
Andrew Castrucci – Fracktured lives, 2021
Andrew Castrucci – Fracktured lives, 2021 – artist book
Booktable (photo by Alessia Taló)
Chto Delat collective – School of Emergencies, 2023: Lecture performance by Oxana Timofeeva – Video 44 min + Between Shadow and Light, 2023 – Video 70 min + Inside the Diagram – Video 11 min
Chto Delat collective – School of Emergencies, 2023 – detail
Chto Delat collective – School of Emergencies, 2023 – detail
Kevin van Braak & Ipeh Nur – Silence would be treason, 2023
Kevin van Braak & Ipeh Nur – Silence would be treason, 2023 – detail
All photos by Aad Hoogendorn, if not mentioned otherwise.
Exhibition spaces and scenography (slide show).
Atelier van Lieshout Sculpture Garden Entrance. Photo: Alex Close
Rowan van As’ Taxi on the sidewalk in front of Brutus. Photo: Alex Close
Brutus street entrance, Keileweg 18. Photo: Alex Close
Entrance to Petromelancholia through AVL sculpture garden. Photo: Alex Close
Opening speeches in AVL sculpture garden. Photo: Caro Linares
Entrance Petromelancholia on opening night. Photo Caro Linares
Exhibition space “Kathedraal” during build-up. Photo: Alex Close
Installing Marina Zurkow’s Petroleum Manga in “Kathedraal”. Photo: Alex Close
Exhibition at Brutus, in the port of Rotterdam, NL, Sept 1 to Nov 19
In bed with petroleum. In the air. On the road. On the plate. All over and inside bodies. It’s a love affair that modern industrial civilization has been having with oil (and gas), its fuels and the materials created from it. More than that: it’s a love of life, profoundly influencing how people live, move, eat, dress, love, experience, aspire, and believe. A love, though, that has increasingly expressed destructive aspects, excess, exhaustion, abuse, addiction, and contamination.
“Petromelancholia” is the condition that the US energy humanities scholar Stephanie LeMenager diagnosed as being at the core of her home country’s cultural and political struggle to hang on to “oil culture“. The more people realize that the age of oil is eventually going to end—and has to in regard to the state of the planet—the harder they cling on to it. Following this diagnosis, the world has lately been swept by waves of petromelancholia. Acknowledging the long-lasting success of these dynamics of denial, which started 50 years ago, a mere “energy transition” might turn out to be not enough to get over modernity’s true love.
Wouldn’t we also need acceptance and grief, reconciliation and reparations—processes that eventually lead to profound cultural, political and economic transitions?
Upon opening of our OIL-exhibition in Wolfsburg two years ago, Joep van Lieshout, one of the participating artists, asked if we wanted to curate a follow-up show at his newly founded „artist-driven space“ Brutus in the port of Rotterdam.
Rotterdam! One of the oil capitals of Europe, largest port, largest refinery, largest petroleum storage and processing capacities. Largely and radically rebuilt after WW2 in all kinds of modernist style — a through and through petromodern city.
And since our 2017 visit to a Delft ‘Petroleumscapes’ conference, the region had played a role in our own petroleumscapes research, resulting in ‘Greenhause’, a chapter of our Atlas and in some smaller essays and publications).
Though a comparably low-budget project, the possibility to bring our curatorial research there was tempting.
After one and a half years of preparation, with a short residency and a petrosalon at Goethe Institut Rotterdam in april last year as startig points and deciding additional help and motivation, the exhibition opened on Friday, Sept 1st! Other than our Wolfsburg exhibition, which claimed to show the first retrospective of 100 years of petromodern art, „Petromelancholia“ is largely dedicated to our contemporary petromodern states of heart and mind.
The exhibition consists of four chapters: 1 In Bed with Oil 2 Oil Encounters 3 Toxic Legacy and the Museum of Petromodern Futures 4 Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet.
The opening paragraphs of this entry are from the wall-text of the first chapter. All four wall-texts can be downloaded as a pdf here.
Click here to see a photo documentation of all the works in the exhibition.
The exhibition is spread over the complete Brutus-compound and consists of four chapters. Here’s a floorplan (click on image to enlarge or download as pdf).
The very well written book takes on the form of the ironic encyclopedia that has been popular since the nineteenth century, as a parody of the great encyclopedias of the Enlightenment era. Impressive color illustrations complement the text and, according to the authors, justify the “Atlas” of the subtitle (p. 15). In their individual glosses, the authors almost always succeed in offering interesting and often novel discoveries. For example, the topic of drilling is presented in a well-founded and stimulating manner in a brief account. The catalytically controlled chemical transformation of petroleum constituents is also solidly presented under the heading “Molecular Mobilization” (pp. 49–57). Often, the reader’s expectations are deliberately played with—as, for example, when the essay entitled “Animals in the Oil Field” (pp. 199–203) deals not with seabirds that are glued together and dying but, rather, with animals that visit drilling grounds. This approach arouses interest and curiosity but also increases perplexity. The reader is left alone with the material and must tell his own story.
And this is precisely the goal; it also fits the form of the ironic encyclopedia, which from the outset does not lead one to expect that an overview will be presented. The history of oil is a history that crashes over us. “Erdöl: Ein Atlas der Petromoderne” aims to use brief spotlights, from very different perspectives, to draw attention to a substance that is part of the everyday life of modernity. It succeeds in doing so; at the same time, the well documented individual articles offer suggestions for further study and some connections that may be new even to researchers who have been in the field for some time. An English edition is in preparation.«