Oil
Tonight I present three short films which represent petroleum’s vast power. In the first short, oil is personified, as the force which has magically arrived to fuel our modern technological age. Could silent short by Los Angeles film collective from the 1930s “Artkino” be a communist-inspired vision of machine-age euphoria?
In Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives of the Tar Sands, the omniscience is transferred to the aerial perspective, providing a machine view of the landscape enabled, of course, by the oil which fuels the airplane. Yet, this aerial provides a view for us, a visceral experience of the scale of the impact which oil, specifically the Canadian Tar Sands, is having on this remote northern region of Canada.
In the last short, by Swiss artist Ursula Biemann, a nearly identical aerial view of the tar sands whispers its relationship to a human and frontal depiction of the impact of the use of fossil fuels. In this work, Biemann presents a kind of globalized cause and effect video argument, where the tar sands is set up as the cause for the sea level rise faced by a shore-dwelling Bangladeshi community, so far from Canada. Biemann describes Deep Weather as on oil and water as the two primordial liquids that form the undercurrents of all narrations as they activate profound changes in planetary ecology.
One word about the aerial perspective. Much as been written about aerial views as being a kind of “god’s eye” or objective view of the landscape, a viewpoint which places the viewer at a remove from the landscape. Yet, I would argue, that both Mettler’s and Biemann’s visions, this aerial viewpoint services to implicates as well as to removes us from the sight. And I would ask you to contemplate the question of what it does to our consciousness to see something that is so much greater than what we could ever see with our own eyes without the aid of this kind of high flying technology? What kinds of views and viewpoints are necessary for us to understand the scale of environmental transformation that is taking place in the name of technology today?
Ursula Biemann is an artist, writer, and video essayist whose work is research oriented and involves fieldwork in remote locations where she investigates climate change and the ecologies of oil and water. Peter Mettler is a Swiss-Canadian film director and cinematographer, best known for his cinematography on the Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky film Manufactured Landscapes. Artkino was an amateur film collective based in Los Angeles. Despite the appearance that Oil: A Symphony in Motion was produced by the oil industry, to the best of my knowledge, it was created as an experimental film. Though, considering the importance of the car for the development of LA, perhaps this work, made in 1933, was responding to the nascent car culture blossoming around them.
Ursula Biemann is an artist, writer, and video essayist whose work is research oriented and involves fieldwork in remote locations where she investigates climate change and the ecologies of oil and water.
Peter Mettler is a Swiss-Canadian film director and cinematographer, best known for his cinematography on the Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky film Manufactured Landscapes.
Artkino was an amateur film collective based in Los Angeles. Despite the appearance that Oil: A Symphony in Motion was produced by the oil industry, to the best of my knowledge, it was created as an experimental film. Though, considering the importance of the car for the development of LA, perhaps this work, made in 1933, was responding to the nascent car culture blossoming around them.
