Abstract

 

Most of the research existed out of understanding what is happening out in the open ocean regarding the oil industry. And how do we as humans relate to an industry that has a scale which we can hardly comprehend?
The project and the video are made to show how the whole oil cycle works. Therefore it was really important to start from a situation we all know: the gas station. From this point, it all starts and it is really interesting to go back to everything that had to happen before, just so we could get a little bit of oil for our cars.

 

The main intention is clearly explained and inspired by this quote:
 

     “Artists create work to help people see the unseen, to sense what they cannot sense, to

     understand the world in a different way. There is a failure in that there are very few images of the

     Anthropocene that are very impactful. As artists, there is a challenge to communicate that... I

     really believe in visual literacy and there are very few images of the Anthropocene and the unseen

     that are convincing.”  ¹

​

Which all started from the idea of telling the story of the ocean giant Draugen (a Norwegian oil platform). And ended up showing everything it is connected to. Going as far as the unthinkable depths we drill to obtain the oil.

 

The used method is inspired by a text called ‘Leviathan in the Aquarium’. To see the aquarium as a way to understand the bigger ocean. To frame a portion of the underwater world and to show an unframeable whole. And above all to confront ourselves with the friction between our selfish economic worries and the expansive scales of the Earth. 
It is a sort of microcosm that renders the ocean in a visible, comprehensible way and provides us something for reflection and action.

By making people wander through the 'innocent' drawing, aspire them to build a world beyond the suffocating values of the economy. ²

​

​

​

1 Jeremy Bolen, “Antropozine”, interview by Andrew Yang, Views from the Antropocene Campus, HKW, 2015

2 Rania Ghosn, and El Hadi Jazairy, “Leviathan in the Aquarium”, Journal of Architectural Education: Environments 71, no. 2 (October 2017): 271-273.