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Beauty of Oil@Petrocultures 2022: Transformations

24. – 27. August 2022, Stavanger

Cruise Ship, Oil Museum, and Dinosaur in the Center of Stavanger. ©Alex Close

“We live in turbulent times, and the role of petroleum is at the heart of global and local political debate about how we should rebuild after COVID-19 and address our worsening crises of climate and international stability. A transition to a world without oil as its primary source of fuel and energy is vital if we are to reach the climate targets set by the Paris Agreement, but the pathway, feasibility, and timing of such an unprecedented transition is still hotly debated. We know that oil will come to an end, but whether its closing date is set by emptied reservoirs, greener alternatives, or political decisions, is still to be determined. Recognizing that the “age of oil” is being challenged, petrocultures2022 invites scholars and artists, journalists and activists, politicians and business actors to engage critically in the debate and the transition to alternatives. The conference will be held at the Norwegian Petroleum Museum and a nearby conference venue in Stavanger, the energy capital of Norway.“

description from Petrocultures-website

We spent 4 days and nights at the first physical meeting of the international Petrocultures researcher crowd since Glasgow 2018. It took place in the conference rooms of the Oljemuseum and on a historical ship, the MS Sandness, which used to commute between Bergen and Stavanger. About 300 people attended the conference. The program was packed, and often the conference rooms – among them the lovely breakfast room and second class salon on the boat – were so, too. Keynote speeches were given on thursday, friday and saturday morning at Stavangeren, a former church assembly room in the old city of Stavanger.

Find the full conference programm here.

Below is an impresssionistic collection of images from the town and the conference.

  • ©Ernst Logar
Images from Stavanger: conference, city, and oil museum.
All images by Alex Close except upper right by Ernst Logar.
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Enter the Plastocene

Presentation by Alexander Klose at the transdisciplinary festival and symposium Wasteland, July 8, The Grey Space in the Middle, The Hague.

»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.
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»Combustion: Reading the Ashes«, seminar at HKW Berlin with Barbara Fiałkiewicz-Kozieł, Neil Rose, and Benjamin Steininger, 20.5.2022, 5 pm

In the context of the congress »Unearthing the Present« (19.5.-22.5.2022), one of the final events after ten years of Anthropocene research and debate at HKW, together with the members of the Anthropocene-Working-Group Barbara Fiałkiewicz-Kozieł (PL) and Neil Rose (UK), Benjamin Steininger will be giving the seminar »Combustion: Reading the Ashes« on Friday, 20.5.2022, 5 pm. It is part of a series of presentations on Friday.

Find more about the congress »Unearthing the Present« (19.5.2022-22.5.2022) and the Workshop series »Markers – Material Delineations of the Present« (20.5.2022, 3–9 pm) at the respective links

In English // Free admission // Limited capacity, registration is desired:

Registration_Markers@hkw.de

Microplastics in bodies of water or organisms or the accumulation of radionuclides from nuclear weapons tests – anthropogenic markers have a political, technological and ecological history behind them. Developed from the online publication Anthropogenic Markers, researchers of the Anthropocene Working Group, humanities scholars and artists provide an insight into the laboratory practice of “Anthropocene forensics.” Eight sessions examine chemical and biological fingerprints as demarcations for the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene. Registration for individual workshops is now open.

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»Towards a Chemical Cultural Theory: Speculating with Materials«, contribution by Benjamin Steininger in: Marcel Finke, Kassandra Nakas (ed): »Fluidity. Materials in Motion«, Berlin: Reimer 2022, p.165-186.

The volume is the final publication of the DFG funded research network Fluidity. Materials in Motion, which was active from 2019 until 2022. Authors among others: Kassandra Nakas, Marcel Finke, Inge Hinterwalder, Friedrich Weltzien, Jens Soentgen, Franz Mauelshagen (get the book here).

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»AnthropoFest« at Tulane University New Orleans, 5.5.2022, licenced and approved as »bureaucratic research and documentation« by Beauty of Oil

The workshop at Tulane University was inspired by the 2019 Beauty of Oil »Bureau of Commodity Flows« (link to the report here) . We are happy to be part of it, at least from the distance !

»AnthropoFest invites festival goers to bring an object at JazzFest and register it to generate a collection that reflects the material culture of Jazz Fest this year. Plastic straw, mango sorbet, sand from the racetrack, or sunscreen: come create this collection! Where did this stuff come from and how does it relate to the Anthropocene— or Age of Humankind? Join us in collecting and creating the 2022 JazzFest AnthropoFest Collection!«

See our certificate displayed in a very nice way on the right top in the black frame.

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»Molecular Mobilization«, contribution by Benjamin Steininger to the text series »Combustion« at the anthropocene-curriculum-publication »Anthropogenic Markers«

»How can an archaeology of the present address molecules as driving elements of the “Great Acceleration?” Benjamin Steininger, cultural theorist and also cultural practitioner, contends that the mobilization of combustion fuel molecules through the technical apparatus of catalytic chemistry has triggered a cascade of accelerations which lead to the fundamental transformation we now call the Anthropocene.«

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»Investigating Petromelancholia: Petrosalon Rotterdam«, Goethe-Institut Rotterdam, 22.4.2022, 19:00, Westersingel 9

Foto: Project ‘Snelweg – Highways in the Netherlands’ van Theo Baart, Cary Markerink en Tracy Metz

(please scroll down for English invitation)

In alle politieke kampen en zelfs in de olie-industrie is men het er thans over eens dat wij het fossiele tijdperk achter ons moeten laten. Maar hoe slagen wij erin ons los te maken van een technologie en een cultuur die elk gebied van het leven diep hebben doordrongen? En hoe zal het leven ‘na de olie’ eruit zien?

Rotterdam kan worden gezien als een etalage voor de successen en de verschrikkingen van de petromoderniteit. De stad ligt in een geografisch gebied dat eeuwenlang door de mens is gevormd en is een van de oliehoofdsteden van de wereld. Rotterdam heeft de belangrijkste oliehaven, de grootste raffinaderij en de meeste petrochemische fabrieken van Europa. De stad zelf werd herbouwd als een uitgesproken modern project na de totale verwoesting door – petromoderne – Duitse oorlogstechnologie in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. De breedte van de lokale ervaring met vele aspecten van de wereldwijde petromoderne opbouw en vernietiging maakt een verscheidenheid aan vragen mogelijk: over materiaalstromen, levenswijzen, economische en politieke grondslagen en koloniale verwikkelingen.

Op uitnodiging van het Goethe-Institut verblijft cultuurtheoreticus en curator Alexander Klose van het onderzoekscollectief Beauty of Oil (Berlijn/Wenen) twee weken in Rotterdam voor een eerste onderzoek naar de stand van zaken rond de petromoderniteit in de stad. Dit markeert het begin van een langere onderzoeks- en conceptuele fase ter voorbereiding van een tentoonstelling over ‘petromelancholie’, die Beauty of Oil samen met Brutus/Atelier van Lieshout in het najaar van 2023 in Rotterdam zal realiseren.

In een Petrosalon aan het einde van zijn onderzoeksverblijf zal Alexander Klose samen met de cultuurtheoreticus en wetenschapshistoricus Benjamin Steininger de eerste resultaten en conceptuele ideeën in het Goethe-Institut Rotterdam presenteren en ter discussie stellen. In de traditie van de vroegmoderne salons zal er gelegenheid zijn voor conversatie in een informele sfeer onder het genot van een hapje en een drankje.

Alexander Klose en Benjamin Steininger zijn stichtende leden van het collectief Beauty of Oil. Onlangs nog stelden zij samen de tentoonstelling Oil – Schönheit und Schrecken des Erdölzeitalters samen in het Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. Zij zijn redacteuren van Erdöl – Ein Atlas der Petromoderne (Matthes & Seitz Berlijn, 2020).
De Petrosalons die zij sinds 2018 hebben georganiseerd, vonden tot nu toe onder meer plaats in Wenen (Oostenrijk), Minsk (Wit-Rusland) en Trondheim (Noorwegen).

Beperkt aantal plaatsen beschikbaar.
Aanmelden verplicht tot uiterlijk 20 april 2022 via Claudia Curio


»Investigating Petromelancholia: Petrosalon Rotterdam«, Goethe-Institut Rotterdam, 22.4.2022, 19:00, Westersingel 9

It is our pleasure to invite you to the PETROSALON ROTTERDAM on Friday, April 22, starting at 7 pm at the Goethe-Institut in Rotterdam, Westersingel 9.
The salon will be hosted by Alexander Klose and Benjamin Steininger, cultural theorists and founding members of the curatorial research collective Beauty of Oil (beauty-of-oil.org). Since 2018, the collective has been organizing PETROSALONS in various locations in Europe, including Minsk, Belarus, Trondheim, Norway, and Vienna, Austria.

The twilight of the Oil Age is looming. People from all political camps and even from the oil industry—now renamed energy industry—have started to agree on the necessity to go “beyond fossil”. But how do we leave a technology and culture in which we are so deeply submerged? And what will life “after oil” be like?

Rotterdam can be interpreted as a showcase of the achievements and horrors of petromodernity. Located in a geographical region that has been anthropogenic — man-made — for centuries, it is one of the world’s oil capitals. The city hosts the largest oil harbour, the largest refinery and the largest accumulation of petrochemical facilities in Europe. The city itself was rebuilt as a distinctly modern project after its total destruction by petromodern German warfare in the Second World War. The range of local experiences with all layers of global petromodern construction and destruction allows for a multiple set of questions: to the flows of materials, to ways of living, economical and political foundations and colonial entanglements.

At the invitation of the Goethe-Institut, Alexander Klose will spend two weeks in Rotterdam to start an investigation on the state of the city’s petromodernity. The research will be used to conceptualise and prepare an exhibition on “petromelancholia”, which Beauty of Oil will realise together with Brutus/Atelier van Lieshout in autumn 2023. During the PETROSALON ROTTERDAM, findings and conceptual ideas will be presented and discussed with the guests. The evening is an informal event in the tradition of the early modern salon: Everyone is invited to participate in the conversation, finger food and drinks will be served.

The PETROSALON ROTTERDAM is co-organised by the research collective Beauty of Oil(Berlin/Vienna) and the Goethe-Institut Niederlande.

Limited space! Please make sure to get your application by emailing to Claudia Curio until April 20, 2022 here

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Extraction—Production—Destruction. On the Contradictory Productivity of Oily Images

Essay by Alexander Klose, published in Resolution Magazine #1 (2021), ‘Hot Pictures’

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.

NASA satellite image of Deepwater Horizon oil spill May 24 2010 ©wikicommons

Download full article as pdf here

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Oily Houston

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.

link to full interview

link to background information on minigeology on Rice University Website

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. 

A whole panorama in the best tradition of the “Futurama” commissioned by General Motors for the 1939 World’s Fair “The World of Tomorrow” in New York City is dedicated to future energy city (supported by Chevron). But it was closed for maintenance, I could only take a glimpse from the side.

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.