Extraction Out of Frame, Multimedia film installation with: archival magazines, adhesive photo vinyl, photographic prints, light box, and video monitor, 2023
In this solo exhibition and commissioned film especially created for VOX, Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montréal, I look at the intersection of science and technology studies, visual cultures of extraction, and history of photography and film productions of British Petroleum. The centerpiece of this exhibition, “Scenes of Extraction,” is the second film episode to my ongoing investigation of the visual grammars of extraction during the operations of British Petroleum in Iran and the broader West Asia. Over the past six years, I have been researching the early geological surveys and seismic mappings that were done extensively in the South Western provinces of Iran, generally named as the “Iranian oil belt,” wherein the majority of the oil fields were discovered and developed in the onset of the 20th century. Photographs, films, and magazines used in “Scenes of Extraction” and the larger exhibition are drawn from the British Petroleum’s film library and photographic collections along with my personal archive gathered over a meticulous 6 year-long archival research process. As a filmmaker and researcher working at the intersection of documentary media practice and visual arts research, this exhibition is “guided by the archive as a conceptual prism, material object, and imaginative practice (Daniela Agostinho).” I examine the archival temporalities and evidentiary aesthetics enmeshed in the ethnographic photography practices in the early colonial explorations of oil in Iran and read their visual frame in relation to an extractive logic at the heart of the operational images of BP.
“Extraction Out of Frame” connects different photographic and film apparatus that were invented and used to simultaneously imagine and destroy the subterranean layers of earth in the process of geophysical explorations for locating new oil reserves. Some of these photography apparatus that I discuss in this exhibition include: early cameras used to translate sound of explosions into movements of light during “reflection seismography” methods or an early 35mm camera prototype developed by a Dutch geologist especially made for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to enter an oil well to capture the earth’s surface from within. “Extraction Out of Frame” sheds light to the intertwined history of extraction and the camera that have remained largely understudied. In this exhibition, I explore the tension, desire, and fantasy of seeing and destroying the earth propelled with this extractive logic through connecting disparate official and unofficial archives ranging from photographs, oil magazines, found footage, amateur geological footage, and oil documentaries made by BP.
I extend my gratitude to Marie-Josée Jean and the VOX team for the production of this exhibition.
Supplementary material:
Exhibition text written by Natasha Marie Llorens
Visualizing Extraction: A Round Table Discussion with Siobhan Angus and Ishita Tiwary
Reviews:
Stéphanie Hornstein reviews the exhibition in Ciel Variable Magazine, purchase the issue here.
Siobhan Angus reviews the exhibition in ESPACE Magazine, purchase the issue here.