KUNSTLICHT | Call for Papers: The Worldliness of Oil: Recognition and Relations

Guest Editors: Helga Nyman and Anne Szefer Karlsen

The extraction and use of crude oil and natural gas has fundamentally transformed our societies and the ways we have lived over the past 150 years. As a both visible and invisible agent, oil continues to shape individual experiences and national identities, propelling conflict and creating disparate economic opportunities.

Throughout the twentieth century, the intensified extraction of oil and later gas, led certain nation states to rely heavily on the income generated through their petro-economy, either directly or through heavy taxation. The spaces of extraction vary from deep ocean beds to deserts; from densely populated, urban sites, to sparsely inhabited but intimately managed Indigenous territories like those where hydraulic fracturing of geological formations are located. Overall, the moment of discovery and extraction is tethered to technological development, energy depletion, and consumption. Perhaps more importantly, those historical discoveries of oil are catalysts that translate into politics, such as fights for independence, or a tighter grip of colonisation. Thus, spatial characteristics and historical circumstances varies widely. Nevertheless, the editorial proposition is that there is a level of recognition between those that intimately inhabit petrostates.

In this issue of Kunstlicht, you are invited to investigate the (parallel or displaced in time) relations between, and experiences of, oil nations, or petrostates, if you will. These are countries that are marinating in resources, but also deeply entrenched and engaged in resource conflicts and wars. Those who live on and support themselves off the lands and oceans are directly impacted by this industry and consequently its economy and politics.

We are looking for socio-spatial interconnectedness, where experiences of narratives, architecture, visual art, literature, social expressions, bodily and other archives, economy, ecology are translated and interpreted to investigate heroism, infrastructures, practices, responses, and traumas related to extraction, politics of experiences, the effects of colonisation, neo-colonisation, and settler colonisation. The editors of this issue invite you to investigate comparative or displaced relations and experiences of oil nations through cultural expressions pertaining to the landscapes, personal and national, that oil has forged.

We invite contributions rooted in art, art history, visual culture, and architecture, and encourage queer, feminist, activist, and speculative approaches. We also welcome proposals for image or text based artistic contributions.

 
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