OIL-A History Of....

In the last couple of decades human beings are modifying and destroying nature by burning fossil material which synthesized during millions of years and subsequently leading to the actual climate change. Absolutely nothing that accompanies, surrounds or is consumed in our everyday life is not connected with oil in any way. Neither are political decisions, economical interests, demographic changes and globalized inequality. Oil companies and their affiliates are controlling almost every aspect of our daily life: from financial systems to medical and educational ones and by now the global food chain as well. Simultaneously, all man-made material deriving from oil accumulating on and in the earth, in water and air is bound to last for the next millions of years. One could say that the oil chain determines and controls the further life on earth. The OIL project was created during the Corona crisis and bears witness to this in various ways: Bacteria created life on earth as well as crude oil and now are living from plastic residues, this as an analogy to the pandemic virus, a tiny little thing decisive for life and death. Another aspect is the disappearance of biodiversity resulting in pandemics. My working method is a search for images on the Internet and in my archive, the flood of images an analogy to mass production, abundance and immoderation. The blue sky without contrails, which for the first time for millions of people to be seen (and also might be the last time for many others) has been inserted as chapter-spreads. The work is divided into different themes, such as the production and exploitation of crude oil, wars dependent on it, all means of transport, the petrochemical-rich food chain, other derivatives and their consequences, the contamination of entire landscapes and groundwater, right down to plastic and its decomposition into microplastics, which in turn are crushed again by bacteria, but will never completely disappear.