"Reflecting Oil" Project

The interdisciplinary project “Reflecting Oil”, led by Ernst Logar, combines art and science to examine the role of oil in today's society. It sheds light on the complex relationships between oil, human behavior and ecological systems and shows how artistic and scientific approaches can jointly create new knowledge that is of central importance for transformation. The project has resulted in an anthology with a total of 25 chapters.

In the article “What a Difference a Substance Makes”, Simone Gingrich explains the extent to which today's use of resources is dependent on oil, as well as the ecological and social problems caused by the extraction and burning of oil in local and global contexts. To this end, she examines the photograph “Christmas Tree” by Nigerian photographer George Osodi. Phasing out oil is necessary, but challenging. It requires cooperation and new ideas.

Together with seven other authors and graphic designer Olaf Osten, Johannes Schmidt has developed the graphic novel “Teresa a fiction on a not-so-deep future of energy”, which describes a utopia without oil from the perspective of six characters (including a plastic cup, an oxygen molecule and the Brazilian girl Teresa). The last image shows a world in which carbon is recycled instead of being pumped from the earth into the air. The plastic cup remains in the ground as a relic of our oil-dependent generation.

Logar, Ernst (ed.), 2025. Reflecting Oil, Edition Angewandte, De Gruyter, Berlin. ISBN: 978-3-68924-253-4. Creative Commons BY4.0
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783689240462 

The publication was created as part of the artistic research project Reflecting Oil: Arts-Based Research on Oil Transitionings (FWF-PEEK project AR547, 2019-2024). 
Further information: https://www.reflectingoil.info