PETROBIBLICA: Rapture on Earth
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
No one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere is safer than here
—Warsan Shire, “Home”
In 1959, Dr. M. A. Matthews of the Shell International Chemical Company, released an article titled “The Earth’s Carbon Cycle,” in which he affirmed the theory that fossil fuel burning releases unimaginable amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.1 He also was the first scientist who (ostensibly at the behest of Shell, his employer) cast doubt on the harmful effects of carbon dioxide being dumped into our air. It ‘might conceivably change the climate, but even if it does, the earth has sequestration systems in place to manage it’ Matthews says, despite knowing otherwise. In 1959, Petroleum executives had their first opportunity to consider the planet and its inhabitants, and were faced with the choice; continue drilling and become rich beyond comprehension, or research, at a cost, a more sustainable future.
Petrobiblica is the outcome of this moral ultimatum. Petrobiblica is to press the gas pedal when the fuel light is on. It’s the decision to drill anyways. Not only into the deep past of the foundational organic matter of the earth, but into the future of the planet with it. Both are depleting. Petrobiblica is to scream and yell in protest of being all but forced to labor over and construct a man’s lucrative, suicidal dream. It’s to build a rocket and launch yourself out of this tar-cooked and oil soaked gravity. Petrobiblica is to reach one’s hands to the oil pump exploding a dark viscous substance overhead to wash away one’s sins, while the earth disintegrates below you.
This exhibition centers around the dichotomy of the baron and the laborer; of the extractor and the extracted. What might an extraction landscape look like? To me it’s a shower and a sink; abundance and scarcity reflected back towards one another. The extractor, with no choice but to gaze upon the wounds of the extracted.
Notes
1. ehb41. 2023. “Defense, Denial, and Disinformation: Uncovering the Oil Industry’s Early Knowledge of Climate Change.” Common Home. October 25.
