Workshops
Our team, together with a range of knowledgeable contributors in a series of interdisciplinary workshops, reflects on the theoretical and practical possibilities emerging from the artistic experiments. This analysis can also unveil potential analogies between the scientific qualities of crude oil and the social relations which characterize oil-addicted societies.
Workshop XXXII, Matthew T Huber, 22 March 2023
Matthew T. Huber (Department of Geography and Environment, Syracuse University), author of Lifeblood (2013) and Climate Change as Class War (2022), reviews ecological Marxism in his presentation, “A Theory of proletarian ecology: limits and possibilities”. Huber begins by asserting that we are losing the struggle over climate change, which is…
Workshop XXXI, Bob Johnson, 18 January 2023
Bob Johnson, Department Chair of the Social and Psychological Sciences at National University in San Diego, delivered a talk entitled The Titanic and the Stokehold: The Social History of a Chunk of Coal. In this workshop, Johnson introduced participants to a new way of doing archival work focused on the…
Workshop XXX, Anne Szefer Karlsen, 22 February 2022
Anne Szefer Karlsen, one of the curators of Experiences of Oil (12th November 2021-18th April 2022), an exhibition at Stavanger Art Museum which explores shared life experiences between oil nations, meets Reflecting Oil to talk about the exhibition and its rationale. Experiences of Oil is part of Szefer Karlsen’s long-term…
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Workshop XXVIII, Kinga Kiełczyńska, 12 October 2021
Polish artist Kinga Kiełczyńska introduced a selection of her projects from the perspective of the economy of the artworks, that is in terms of how they are made, what materials are used, and what is left of them in the end. Kiełczyńska’s artistic approach and ecological consciousness are encapsulated in…
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Workshop XXVII, Jordan Kinder, 13 July 2021
In his presentation “Petroturfing and the Oil Culture Wars in Canada”, Jordan Kinder, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Art History & Communication Studies at McGill University, Montréal, discussed his upcoming book about the emergence of Canada’s pro-oil movement during the 2010s. This movement presents Canadian oil as an…
Workshop XXVI, Mari Fraga, 15 June 2021
Brazilian artist Mari Fraga holds a PhD in Arts and Contemporary Culture at Rio de Janeiro State University Arts Department (UERJ, 2016), and is currently professor at Escola de Belas Artes of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ),where she coordinates the research group GAE focused on art and ecology.…
Workshop XXV, George Osodi, 18 May 2021
Nigerian photographer George Osodi presents the major ongoing photographic project that he initiated 20 years ago: the documentation of the impact of oil on the communities of the Niger Delta, Africa’s most important oil-producing region. Niger Delta communities were told at the outset that oil, which has been extracted from…
Workshop XXIV, Rayyane Tabet, 11 May 2021
Rayyane Tabet studied Architecture at the Cooper Union, New York, and Fine Art at University of California, San Diego. He lives in Beirut and San Francisco. Born during the Lebanese Civil War in 1983 and growing up during the reconstruction process, he heard many stories that romanticised the economic stability…
Workshop XXIII, Amina Melikova, 20 April 2021
Amina Melikova, the director of Icherisheher Museum Centre, discusses the importance of oil for Azerbaijani art during three key historical periods: pre-revolutionary, Soviet, and independent or modern. Since ancient times, Azerbaijan, and especially its capital Baku, has been known throughout the world for its oil. Oil was drilled in Azerbaijan…
Workshop XXII, Andrei Molodkin, 23 March 2021
France-based Russian artist Andrei Molodkin begins his presentation about his work with crude oil by telling us about his army days. Whilst studying he also served in the Soviet Army, convoying missiles through Siberia. In the freezing temperatures Molodkin would rub oil over his body to provide the warmth to…
Workshop XXI, Karen Pinkus, 15 March 2021
In her speculative and wide-ranging presentation, professor of Italian and comparative literature Karen Pinkus considers the possibility of post-oil narratives – what might these look like and how would they resemble “oil” narratives or other narratives of our recent past and present. She begins by introducing two oil narratives: Oil!…
Workshop XX, Janet Stewart, 2 March 2021
Professor Janet Stewart has a background in visual culture studies and German and is currently Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Durham, UK. Previously based at the University of Aberdeen, her research has engaged with the connection of modernity and its visual culture…
Workshop XIX, David Misch, 9 February 2021
In the first part of his presentation, “Basics of the Petroleum System: The Petroleum geologist’s playground”, David Misch, Deputy Scientific Head of the Chair of Petroleum Geology at Montanuniversität Leoben, draws our attention to the main elements of the petroleum system: source rock, reservoir rock, seal rock and overburden rock.…
Workshop XVIII, Elena Sorokina, 28 January 2021
Russian-born, Paris-based curator and art historian Elena Sorokina presents Petroliana, the exhibition which she curated for the 2007 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, based on her previous exhibition Crude Oil Paintings in 2004 at White Columns, New York. The title of the 2004 exhibition is also that of the work…
Workshop XVII, Johannes Schmidt, 14 January 2021
Energy and resource economist Johannes Schmidt, associate professor at the Institute for Sustainable Economic Development at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, presents his work on reFUEL. This five-year research project, funded by the European Research Council, assesses the role of trade in a future renewable energy…
Workshop XVI, Bernhard Schmidt, 19 November 2020
Bernhard Schmidt is a natural scientist, museum educator and head of the Vienna Technical Museum’s Energy & Mining division since 2012. While he is very much engaged with sustainability and environmental issues, his first job in his role was a redesign of the exhibition on oil & natural gas. This…
Workshop XV, Johannes Frasnelli, 22 October 2020
Johannes Frasnelli is an odour perception specialist currently conducting research at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières’ Chemosensory Neuroanatomy Lab. His field of research is the three chemical senses: smell, taste and the trigeminal system. These three closely interacting senses are associated with the nose and mouth and dedicated to…
Workshop XIV, Elisabeth Dokulil, 22 October 2020
Elisabeth Dokulil holds a PhD in biochemistry and is a practicing psychotherapist, based in Vienna, Austria. Her reflection on oil was triggered by her puzzlement about why oil was used mostly as a fuel, such as for transport and heating. For Dokulil, this is a narrow use of a powerful…
Workshop XIII, Cleo Reece, 15 October 2020
Cleo Reece was born in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. A Cree Métis activist and filmmaker, she cofounded the Keepers of the Athabasca Watershed Society in 2008 in response to her community’s concerns about water. Keepers of the Athabasca Watershed Society are engaged in pedagogical work towards ecoliteracy. They organize workshops…
Workshop XII, Oliver Ressler, 10 September 2020
Oliver Ressler deals with alternatives to capitalism, the global economy, migration and resistance. His focus on the climate crisis goes back to his 1996 installation, 100 Years of Greenhouse Effect, inspired by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius’ (1859-1927) writings on global warming as well as more recent work on sustainable development.…
Workshop XI, Kat Válastur, 3 September 2020
Berlin-based artist Kat Válastur presents her 2016 choreography OILinity, which was inspired by her time living in Baku, Azerbaijan, for six months. She discovered that in Baku everything was defined by oil and that her own body was defined by it too. Drawing a parallel between oil consumption and blood,…
Workshop X, Heather Davis, 27 August 2020
Heather Davis shares some ideas about our relationship with plastic which she theorises in her forthcoming book, Plastic Matter. She argues that while our tangible contact with crude oil is almost non-existent, our relationship with plastic is intimate, as plastic is present in our food and in our clothes, for…
Workshop IX, Benjamin Steininger, 25 August 2020
Benjamin Steininger introduces Erdöl: Ein Atlas der Petromoderne? (Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2020) , a forthcoming book with 43 essays presenting a broad panopticum of various technologies, geographies and cultural practices connected with and based on oil. One essay in the book is called “Black Mirror”. Chemists investigate the reflection…
Workshop VIII, Imre Szeman, 6 August 2020
Imre Szeman begins his presentation “Oil, Coronavirus and the Promise of Green Futures” by identifying three key notions which underlie his talk about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on energy futures: Oil, COVID-19, and Green. He tells us that he will be paying special attention to the narrative of…
Workshop VII, Herwig Turk, 9 July 2020
In his second workshop, Herwig Turk presents several of his art projects dealing with laboratory research to our project partners at the Department Petroleum Engineering at Montanuniversität Leoben. These projects can open up creative and playful possibilities of using the lab equipment at Leoben for us. Herwig presents the works…
Workshop VI, Amanda Boetzkes, 7 July 2020
Amanda Boetzkes presents her research on “plastic capitalism”, opening with a series of powerful images from Chris Jordan’s ongoing project Midway (Albatross) (since 2010). His work shows how the albatross, attracted to the substance, ingests plastic objects with lethal consequences. Plastic is thus shown as the exemplary substance of the…
Workshop V, Peter Troxler, 2 July 2020
Peter Troxler researches the intersection of business administration, society and technology and has been living in Rotterdam since 2005. From 2001 to 2005 he lived in Aberdeen, Scotland, and also worked on previous arts projects on the oil industry with members of the project team. Peter tells us about the…
Workshop IV, Simone Gingrich, 4 June 2020
Simone Gingrich is a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Social Ecology at the University of Natural Resources & Life Sciences Vienna. Her work focuses on interdisciplinary sustainability (sustainability sciences). She is interested in resource use and land use – how fossil energy is used and how it affects…
Workshop III, Herwig Turk, 2 June 2020
Herwig Turk, Senior Artist in the Social Design department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, discusses his interdisciplinary work with scientists with our team. First, he presents his working relationship (2003-09) with the Centre of Ophthalmology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. As it is impossible for him…
Workshop II, Holger Ott, 20 May and 16 June 2020
Holger Ott’s workshop focuses on oil properties from the reservoir engineering point of view. His presentation, ‘Aspects of Reservoir Engineering’, firstly discusses the notion of creativity from his personal perspective. Subsequently he provides a provides a schematic view on oil reservoirs and production, and goes on to link subsurface processes…
Workshop I, Arianna Mondin, 7 May 2020
Arianna Mondin, currently a PhD student at the University of Genoa and on the editorial staff of Vesper. Journal of Architecture, Arts & Theory (Iuav University of Venice), presents the research she undertook for her Master’s degree in Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna: Architettura di Petrolio. In…
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