Resource extraction generates a two-directional movement. Fossil and mineral materials, in order that they be converted into exchangeable commodities are stripped of the context within they occur both in terms of their social histories of labor and displacement, and their natural histories of local ecologies and consumed landscapes. They experience the homogenizing time of commodity exchange. Hence to tie the materials back to their multiple histories and reveal the intractable character of raw materials is an effective aesthetic intervention in these trends.(1)
Norway has become one of the wealthiest countries in the world, because of its petroleum industry.(2) In one of their recent promotional videos, Equinor (formerly Statoil) states ”This is what changed us” referring to the discovery of oil in the North Sea, in an argument to justify continued petroleum activities as an necessity to withhold the current state of welfare.(3) Growing up in Norway, I have experienced a change in the national identity,in parallel with the increasing income from petroleum. Now that the we know that fossile energy has become a factor that alters the climate, new and demanding changes will have to be made.
As our civilization approaches the threshold of irreversible global warming,(4) the question of how art should react to the situation is also highly relevant. In my opinion art may be able to change the way we understand the world, if not the world itself.
The opening quote explains effects of resource extraction and commodification, and how it degenerates knowledge of origin and context. It then introduces artistic methodology as capable of making actions that intervene with this effect.
I am inquiring how the Norwegian petroleum industry and its technology may be caught in between a state of conclusion and further potential at the same time. I will pursue this inquiry by investigating the notion of gesture, technology and commodification in our industrial age, questioning our image of nature, its status as a resource, and what kind of self understanding our instrumental world view has created. With the increasing knowledge of climate change and other human caused ecological disturbances ; What future are we shaping and what choices can we make? My efforts should allow for speculative artistic propositions in relation to such questions.
Time and technological gestures
As the Arctic ice sheet retreats, new technology is developed to expand searching and drilling to the demanding conditions of the Barents Sea.(5) The intention to search for oil and gas in the Arctic is seen by some as controversial, since most climate scientists agree that global warming is what caused the Arctic ice to retreat in the first place. This situation creates a tension point and is of specific interest to my inquiry, since this petroleum technology is oscillating between potential and obsolence.
At a certain point in time humans started using tools.This might have been an important factor for the development of a world view where we act in relation to, not as a part of nature, with the tool or instrument as a interface allowing our gestures to take place. The emergence of such technology might have made it possible for us to establish the first ideas of rationalizing nature as a concept and creating a pace towards efficient extraction of natural resources.The rational mechanistic worldview gained momentum since Descartes and Newton and has created a threshold between humans and nature. Heidegger proposes that through modern technology we see nature as quantifiable standing reserve.(7) The oil industry might be the most powerful modern example of the transformative power of the modern paradigm, and it has become the fuel behind the situation that is at hand, where many resources has been pushed beyond the limits of their tolerance.
Ruins in Denial?
The technology and infrastructure that has been and is still developed to produce oil and gas can be said to be caught in an ambiguous state. According to the current government it displays a potential for the future. At the same time, with the initiatives for shift in energy production, it can be understood as becoming obsolete and hence in a state of ruin. In a ruin one sees a temporal intersection. The ruin originates from the past. It exists in the present and it also shows us the future of all human structures. When looking closer at the history of the technological gesture, and the ecological consequences we are now facing, a temporal intersection becomes a relevant perspective. Ruins have an important place in both archeology and art history, in romantic paintings they signify nostalgia and express reactions of industrial alienation.(8) Robert Smithson developed a concept of ruins in reverse to describe what he called sites of zero panorama where industrial and urban expanse would take place. He said that these sites “..seemed to contain ruins in reverse, that is – all the new construction that would eventually be built. This is the opposite of the “romantic ruin” because the buildings don’t fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built.” (9) The resulting structures might be seen as monuments without history or “memory-traces of an abandoned set of futures”
The arctic oil rigs being developed for the Barents sea may be seen as a kind of ruins in reverse, and with this idea applied it becomes interesting to study them as archaeological sites in the making. Petroleum infrastructure represents the major technological gestures of our time and contribute to traces that will be found in the future, subsequently in the form of a material culture but also the more intangible heritage, such as atmosphere carbon levels. When looking at the petroleum industry in light of the ruin, it also makes sense to apply an archaeologic perspective to the present and recent past, as this might let us speculate what futures are possible as a result of the choices we make now, with climate change and decreased biodiversity at stake.
(1) Ursula Biemann, Deep Weather: The Audiovisual Text in Times of Global Warming in Elemental –An Arts and Ecology Reader pp. 125
(2) https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-richest-countries-in-the-world.html
(3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec3N64De1tk
(4) https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/summary-for-policy-makers/
(5) Berit Kristoffersen, The workable Arctic of ice and oil, in Living Earth –field notes from the Dark Ecology project (Sonic Acts Press, 2016) pp. 219-227
(6) https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/ice_sheets.html
(7) Martin Heidegger, The Question Conscerning Technology in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrel Krell (Harper 1997) pp. 302
(8) Andreas Huyssen, Authentic Ruin in Ruins. Ed. Brian Dillon, (Whitechapel gallery and The MIT press, 2011), pp. 52-55
(9) Robert Smithson, A Tour of the Monuments of the Passaic, New Jersey in Art forum (December 1967), pp. 52-56
The Technological Twilight is a project run by Norwegian artist and publisher Arild Våge Berge
