Holy Petroleum

Agnes Tatzber

2021

What is grass to you? You sit on it. Where once there was grass There you sit now, oil tank, And in front of you is a feeling Nothing. …“ Bertolt Brecht, 1929, Seven hundred intellectuals worship an oil tank

By investigating and processing archival material from the village of Neusiedl an der Zaya, a former oil production site in lower Austria, a language was developed with which to critique the compelling paradigm of “petroculture.“ As an act of counter-mapping, the elevation lines of the site merge with line drawings of spaces that have been structured by petroleum, petroleum products and petroleum byproducts that are omnipresent in our society. Containing a variety of stories, the Baroque aesthetics; celebrating the wealth of a global economy as an act in its own right; are made visible by covering the white on white screen printed paper with pitch black fully saturated oil.

Relevant projects