Living in Petroculture – What do we need to see?
What do we need to see? is a film installation made from visual explorations of living in Petroculture. Through radical subjectivity, I investigated how can we contextualise the human-fossil fuel industry relationship in a way which will challenge the normalisation of climate crisis and instigate action.
We live in a society shaped by oil and its outcomes. It’s a bit like saying – how does the fish know where the water is? Except unlike fish, we currently cannot breathe underwater and while we are drowning in time of anthropogenic climate change, hidden in plain sight, the hand which moves the economy and has the final say in politics, the perpetrator of war violence and the silent oppressor of all species, lives quietly among us. The ubiquitous, socially invisible substance – the fifth element. While we aim for radical geopolitical transition from oil, the very absence of this substance from our visual vocabulary impedes our ability to fully address environmental issues (Wilson, Carlson, & Szeman, 2017). With oil to be found nowhere and everywhere: with factual information not received with emancipated action, I asked myself:
“What is it that we need to see, hear and feel to grasp the gravity of this addiction?”
Starting to ask questions is in itself the first step in debilitating oppressive power structures and binary system operating the Oil machine. Unearthing of the questions can also serve as non-violent but effective means of cracking of the eggshell for people otherwise resistant to seeing the gravity of the issue and facilitate a reflexive process rather than didactic. Therefore, I chose visual mapping of Petroculture led by a series of questions as my research method in investigating the human – fossil fuel relationship as well as eventual means of its contextualisation. In these visual explorations:
I am using my body and the camera as tools – I examine my subjectivity, yet I am not the subject of the film – the subject stays oil and our obscure relationship with it.
In this mapping, I do not move from A to B. I draw freely, intuitively. Counter to linear, chronological film production process that I came to know as the standard – I explore what this self feeding loop of writing, filming, editing and reflecting can alter. Each aspect taking a lead interchangeably and cumulatively guiding the process. It is my thinking process captured in time.
The film is intended to be experienced as an installation. Coming out of the screen, outside of the intellectual space of visuals contained in a 2D cage, the materiality of cheap shimmering residues of oil appear present in the room, linking your physical body experience, reaching towards you to cross the safety distance of abstract construction.
The film is consisted of two parts playing simultaneously. On the left we are seeing mostly the performative sequence of slow interaction with nature, life affirming sensuality, body and space centric, eco-sexual in feeling yet incapable to fully step outside Petroculture, always experiencing the world through the filter of omnipresent Petroleum. Searching for spaces where oil is not and being aware of existing confined within the boundaries of oil.
On the right, we follow a collage of found footage, archive footage and own footage. The two films although rhythmically and conceptually juxtaposing, are not in dualistic opposition to each other but they are in conversation, collaborating with each other. The final sequence is where both channels unite and the narrative is bridged.
It is a space for reflexion for the viewer. To be carried with the flow of images and sound but make a space to think in-between the rhythm. To see, wonder, reflect consciously or unconsciously:
Visual questioning
The process that I had undergone: mapping done through visual questioning, can be applied in other contexts to debilitate oppressive power structures by self recognition. “[T]he ability to see and describe one’s own reality is a significant step in the long process of self-recovery; but it is only a beginning.” (hooks, 1984) Filmmaking quite literary is a perspective amplifier, but I also came to see it as a tool for a perspective shift. Through the filmic research, I have been able to process and make visible, to myself and others, my own relationship to the fossil fuel industry and to position myself and see where I stand. This process can be further developed to work collaboratively within a group or a community. It can be a tool for understanding one’s own perspective and perspectives of others, either of shared experience or even the opposite. A tool to recognise and share how one exists within the system, acknowledging the importance and necessity of ‘situated knowledge’ (Haraway, 1988) for intersubjective creation of spaces for emancipatory action.
If you want to navigate a map, you have to know where you stand first. Without acknowledging subjective perspectives, we only have a partial understanding, we are excluding an essential part of the reality and impeding our own capacity to effectively interact with it. Without the emotional aspect, we cannot act. It is not to say that we should undermine the importance of objective claims, but rather that these should exist as equally important because “To deny the importance of subjectivity in the process of transforming the world and history is naive and simplistic. It is to admit the impossible: a world without people.’’(Freire, 1972)
Asking What do we need to see? is an empowering practice of self enquiry through visual thinking. Making oil structures visible, showing and seeing how do we actually relate to the machinery, how do we exist within them, means making it personal. The world desperately needs to make this personal, not only on a theoretical level, but on a physical level. It is this body that can feel and this body that can act.
Because once we finally see the effects of oil leaking through the perfectly clean white walls, once the wave backsplashes to its origin with full power and climate crisis forcefully becomes tangible and personal for the rest of us, it will be too late to be sorry. We do not have that time.
What do you need to see?
Wilson, S., Carlson, A., & Szeman, I. (2017). Petrocultures: Oil, politics, culture. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
hooks, b. (1984) Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. South End Press p 24
Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Penguin Education.
Haraway, D. (1988) ‘Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective’. Feminist Studies, 14 (3), 575–99. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066.
