In the blog post preceding this, I argue that there is a dissonance between the presence of a nature reserve in close proximity to oil fields in Qatar, and end with the question that perhaps there is not necessarily a divide that exists between the natural world and the petrol dependent one. I found the following quote from Hannes Bergthaller’s article titled “Fossil Freedoms: The Politics of Emancipation and the End of Oil” particularly useful in this context.[1] Bergthaller writes, “Petroleum, as it figures in these debates, assumes something of the ambivalent status of Derrida’s pharmakon (95–104): flickering between remedy and poison, feeding and frustrating the desire for individual or national self-determination, it is both that which makes liberty possible, and, at the same time, poisons it at the root.”[2] The concept of pharmakon — both poison and cure, represents Qatar’s exhibition of its petromodern oil fields juxtaposed with its nature reserves.
Serra’s work is not entirely removed from the destructive version of petro-modernity either. Philip Cooke in his article “The Resilience of Sustainability, Creativity and Social Justice from the Arts & Crafts Movement to Modern Day “Eco-Painting”” writes about the various aesthetics of modern ecoart.[3] Writing about the sustainability of eco art projects by drawing a comparison between Richard Serra and Olafar Eliasson, he argues, “Richard Serra, whose typical work is inordinately expensive, wasteful of energy and materials in its use of huge metalwork, non-locally resourced, but rather, transported over oceanic distances, and solipsistic in its desire to display the artist’s technological learning (wide use of aerospace software in computer-generated metal-shaping) to make art a triumph over the natural environment…”[4] Although Serra’s work occupies more aerial space than land space, it is true that his work stands out in relation to the natural environment, and appears to conquer the visual field of the visitor. Furthermore, Cooke is right in arguing that the unsustainability of Serra’s projects makes their natural surroundings especially redundant.
However, these criticisms must not negate the cultural impact that both the oil industry and Serra’s sculptures have had despite being firmly established in unsustainable environmental practices. Furthermore, both objects bring into question the nature of their materiality. Jane Bennett in Vibrant Matter explores materiality in objects and the moment where they become independent of human meaning making processes.[5] The Qatar Petroleum signs on the way to the Zekreet desert become agential beings of their own, void of my personal perception of their environmental consequences, they are also things that interact with the world. The Serra sculptures too, independent of Cooke’s interpretation of their unsustainable presence in the desert, interact with their environment in very human ways. The sculptures erode and rust like a person transforming, habituating, or simply being influenced by their surroundings.
[1] Hannes Bergthaller, “Fossil Freedoms: The Politics of Emancipation and the End of Oil,” in The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities (London, UK: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017), pp. 424-432.
[2] Bergthaller, “Fossil Freedoms: The Politics of Emancipation and the End of Oil,” 426.
[3] Philip Cooke, “The Resilience of Sustainability, Creativity and Social Justice from the Arts & Crafts Movement to Modern Day ‘Eco-Painting,’” City, Culture and Society 6, no. 3 (2015): pp. 51-60, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ccs.2015.02.003.
[4] Cooke, “The Resilience of Sustainability, Creativity and Social Justice, 53.
[5] Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 4 of 6.
