The Oil Show – At Dortmunder (Germany)

In The Oil Show, the Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) has gathered 15 contemporary artists whose work addresses the geopolitical, social and ecological consequences of our dependence on crude oil.

Their attention focuses on regions such as the Niger Delta, whose natural resources have been ruthlessly exploited for several decades—a fact which is hardly ever discussed publicly in the developed countries. Straddling art and scientific research, the interdisciplinary approach that characterizes their work aims to raise the public’s awareness of the increasingly complexity of global economic interests.

The installations, videos, photographs, murals, computer games and films in this exhibition evidence that Western societies are going to great lengths to conceal the inconvenient facts on which their centuries-old hegemony is founded, aiming to strengthen our complacent belief in an unrestricted, consumer-driven market economy—fuelled by non renewable fossil resources—as an everlasting, self-stabilizing model of growth. But appearances are deceptive, as recent research suggests that the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction, which scientists refer to as ‘Peak Oil’, was reached around 2006. Despite the conspicuous optimism put on by the PR departments of billion-dollar global oil companies in light of promising oil reserves (for instance in the Arctic), it is an undisputed fact that the global community urgently needs to address the growing problems caused by rising demands for energy and natural resources on the one hand and the decline of available fossil resources on the other hand. With great artistic sensibility, the works in The Oil Show ask questions which are largely shunned by the dominant Western media.

The exhibition at Dortmunder U coincides with the opening of the HMKV’s ‘white cube’, as previously inaccessible areas such as the balconies in the ‘Kunstvertikale’ (Entrance Hall) and parts of surroundings of Dortmunder U will be used as part of The Oil Show. The artists’ duo Ubermorgen.com (AT/CH) has successfully probed the ground and will install a drilling platform on the former industrial site, with huge pipelines transporting premium Dortmund oil into the U to be refined. The exhibition venue, formerly the Union beer brewery, is thus turned into a gigantic refinery.

The exhibition The Oil Show is curated by Dr Inke Arns, Artistic Director of the Hartware MedienKunstVerein.

Parallel to the exhibition, the HMKV will present a programme of artists’ talks, workshops, theme-related video games, and film screenings within the exhibition.

Artists :
Ursula Biemann (CH)
Christian von Borries (DE)
Mark Boulos (US/NL)
Heath Bunting (UK)
Bureau d’Etudes (FR)
The Center for Land Use Interpretation (US)
Chto Delat? (RU)
Carl Michael von Hausswolff & Thomas Nordanstad (SE)
Werner Herzog (DE)
Mark Lombardi (US)
Michael Mandiberg (US)
George Osodi (NG)
Natascha Sadr Haghighian (IR/DE)
Ubermorgen.com (AT/CH)
and others

Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) at Dortmunder U
12 November 2011–19 February 2012
Dortmunder U – Zentrum für Kunst und Kreativität (Centre for Art and Creativity)
3rd floor
Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse
44137 Dortmund
Germany
Email: info@hmkv.de

www.hmkv.de