TR: Mapping Manu(frac)tured Landscapes
Currently, I'm working as a research assistant for Trading Routes: Grease Trails, Oil Futures, a SSHRC-funded Research / Creation project that is into its second year of four.
It's been a great opportunity to be critically involved with a project whose focus is on an issue that remains at the forefront (and rightly so) of Canadian/Global capital/cultural politics. This projects operates as a multidisciplinary platform to uncover the areas of petrocultures that are overshadowed by capital economies.
It's important to state that this project is neither for nor against oil energy resources or industry, but rather to sustain a pedagogical interest and perspective. Personally, I think that this position is one of strength and value; it is a position that moves not in a singular direction, but one capable of spreading laterally, a movement I believe necessary to (from)under-take a sustainable approach to all resources, both renewable and not, and re-create a sustaining perspective.
If interested, Ruth Beer, one of the artists leading this project has an awesome speech regarding the TR project, held at the 2014 Petrocultures conference at McGill University. Other (equally badass) speeches are from Stephanie LeMenager, and Sheena Wilson. Video here.
My role for this project has been writing. Recently, I wrote the 'curatorial statement' (ohh seedy underbellies, I didn't curate this exhibit) for an exhibition that is going to be held at the Raglan Street Gallery in downtown Melbourne, Australia early July. The statement I wrote can be read here. I also got to title the exhibit, and... I'm pretty jazzed about that.
I’m still writing for this project, but have moved more into creative writing and working on new spoken word poetry... but I’m mauling around some other performance ideas, too-- Oil is colossal, so I’m not sure how an artistic response couldn’t be anything but the same.
Also, just to add..the book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, by Andrew Nikiforuk, has been one of my top resources for thinking about the economic reality of the Alberta Tar Sands.
