Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab
In the framework of the exhibition ‘Reflecting Oil. Petroculture in Transformation’ and in collaboration
with Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures
Framed as a revisitation of
Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials (re.press, 2008), a book in which the logic of petroleum extraction serves
as a theoretical and fictional device to connect the socio-political dynamics of the Middle East, the War on Terror, Capitalism,
and modern and archaic myths of creation, this presentation focuses on a different angle concerning the cryptic tales of petromodernity
or modernity at large.
Petroleum or Napht (from the
Avestan word naftah, meaning a blackened moisture that suddenly conflagrates) will be introduced within the tradition of alchemical
works (L'Œuvre au noir, Marguerite Yourcenar), their influence on painting practices, and the early psychoanalytic tradition
as advanced by the likes of Sandor Ferenczi and Otto Rank. The origin of the (petro-)modern subject of planet Earth will be
traced back to deep origins, where the nested concatenations of cosmological traumas shape the figure of the contemporary
human.
Reza Negarestani is a philosopher and writer. He has lectured and taught at numerous
international universities and institutes. He is the author of Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials (re.press,
2008) and Intelligence and Spirit (2018, Sequence Press/Urbanomic/MIT) among others. Negarestani is currently directing the
Critical Philosophy programme at the New Centre for Research and Practice. Negarestani's current project focuses on the intersections
between philosophy, theoretical computer science and research on the future of humanity and subjectivity.
