Ernst Logar
October 3 – November 15, 2024, opening: October 2, 2024, 7 pmAIL Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab Oil constitutes one of the most important resources of the modern age in our global society. In light of increasing planetary warming, we are on the brink of a radical transformation into a post-fossil era. For a successful transition towards a sustainable future, understanding our present day culture in terms of its entanglements with the oil industry is a prerequisite. The exhibition Reflecting Oil, part of the eponymous artistic research project led by artist Ernst Logar, intensively explores the substance in connection with various concepts…
This series of experiments was conducted in Leoben at the Department Petroleum Engineering with the participation of Arianna Mondin, Ernst Logar, Karez Abdulhameed, Pit Arnold, and Boris Jammernegg. The experiments that were executed took crude oil as the main subject, using technologies that are used in the oil and gas industry and other creative approaches. The first experiment, Frequency Dancing of Crude Oil, aimed to demonstrate the frequential pattern taken by fluid crude oil under acoustic frequencies. A loudspeaker was used in this experiment which acted as a swinging device for the crude oil. Several acoustic sets of different sinus…
Matthew T. Huber (Department of Geography and Environment, Syracuse University), author of Lifeblood (2013) and Climate Change as Class War (2022), reviews ecological Marxism in his presentation, “A Theory of proletarian ecology: limits and possibilities”. Huber begins by asserting that we are losing the struggle over climate change, which is a struggle over power, and makes a call for the climate movement to build the power necessary to confront the fossil fuel industry and stop climate change. Ecological Marxism emerged in the 1970s out of the recognition that the working class was no longer an agent of revolutionary transformation as…
The basic concept of photographic work is exposing analogue colour film material with the lightof different crude oil flames. For this purpose, other crude oils are burned in a specially made ceramiccamera, and a 4×5-inch sheet film is exposed to the fossil flame. The photographic image of the flamelight finds an aesthetic equivalent that makes it difficult to differentiate with the human eye visually. The photographic material exposed by the petroleum flame speaks of the dominance of fossil fire as the basis for shaping our civilizational reality.
In German, the term Ölpest signifies the contamination of the environment with crude oil and is metaphorically linked to the concept of a pandemic. The installation of the same name consists of a transparent hose system with associatively connectedhose-structural elements through which crude oil circulates through pumps. An electronic control systemactivates the oil pumps at random – this results in differently directed streams of crude oil with their ownvisual structures. Another installation element is a transparent plastic foil suspended from the ceiling,inscribed with translations of the term Ölpest in various languages by means of crude oil. The installation makes the…
The photographic work Oil soaked thematizes urban space and its energetic basis. In this context, Dubai is a representative example of a global metropolis based on international trade, tourism, excessive consumption and related extreme energy consumption.Its infrastructure, built in desert terrain, depends on using vast amounts of fossil energy and stands out for its most significant ecological footprint globally. In Oil soaked, crude oil conceptually functions as a formative element and dominates the photographicaesthetic. The urbanity of Dubai, filtered through a glass filter layer coated with crude oil, meets a film in a large-format camera and is mapped in unpredictable…
The Crude Oil Sculptures series was created in reference to the oil rig sculptures of the 2008 Invisible Oilproject in Aberdeen, UK. Miniature oil rig sculptures made from everyday plastic parts serve as a templatefor the current crude oil object series. By creating a negative space in the complex form of an oil rig, a petro-object emerges from its source substance, crude oil, in shades ranging from brown to deep black. The liquid object thematizes in its physical form the omnipresent substance petroleum in its reality-forming moment.
Bob Johnson, Department Chair of the Social and Psychological Sciences at National University in San Diego, delivered a talk entitled The Titanic and the Stokehold: The Social History of a Chunk of Coal. In this workshop, Johnson introduced participants to a new way of doing archival work focused on the material culture of fossil fuels by, in this case, pursuing the social history of a piece of coal from the Titanic that he bought on EBay. Johnson followed this chunk of coal from the moment it was extracted in the sooty coal mines of South Wales to the loading docks…
DISCUSSION: Crude oil is one of the most important fossil resources of modern times. To guarantee a sensibletransition to sustainable energy sources, it is crucial to comprehend the extent to which this omnipresent substance has shaped our modern culture. Artist Ernst Logar’s interdisciplinary projectReflection Oil: Arts-Based Research on Oil Transitionings at the University of Applied Arts deals with thissubject matter and provides an innovative and multi-perspective analysis of the raw material that ispetroleum. The project’s artistic research into this omnipresent material and natural resource is conducted incollaboration with the University of Leoben’s Department of Petroleum Engineering (DPE). Workingtogether on artistic…
Anne Szefer Karlsen, one of the curators of Experiences of Oil (12th November 2021-18th April 2022), an exhibition at Stavanger Art Museum which explores shared life experiences between oil nations, meets Reflecting Oil to talk about the exhibition and its rationale. Experiences of Oil is part of Szefer Karlsen’s long-term artistic research on the experience of living in oil nations, which from a Norwegian perspective draws on personal observations gathered from fieldwork and the public debate available through national and international media. Szefer Karlsen’s research speculates about trauma, especially the trauma shared among people living in oil-exporting countries which also…
Held at the University of Applied Arts Vienna from 9 – 12.6. 2022, Ernst Logar´s arts-based research project Reflecting Oil’s international colloquium seeks to further propel the project’s multi-perspective rethinking of crude oil in an effort to shed fresh light on our understanding of the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of contemporary society’s dependence on fossil fuels, and of the urgent need for sustainable transitions to clean energy. Reprint free of charge with the copyright notice: Ernst Logar, Bildrecht 2020 “Reflecting Oil Experiment”Ernst Logar, Bildrecht 2022 “Crude oil in Honey”
Alois Pumhösel – Fakten und Fiktion im Klimawandel Die Klimaerwärmung wird zunehmend Thema künstlerischer Auseinandersetzung. In vielen Projekten kooperieren Kunstschaffende und Forschende, um Erkenntnisse neuer Art. [article in German]
Holger Ott: ” I am a phycisist and want to understand the world scientifically. And here I meet Ernst Logar, the artist, at the intersection of society, science and art – with the umbrella of philosophy connecting them. Understanding the world can mean understandings its underlying laws, as well as to attempt to understand oneself within this world.“ [publication in German] Wolfgang Schlag, Erdölpumpe oder Honigpumpe, in: Lurz, B., Schlag, W., Wolkinger, T., et al. (2021). Playbook Klimakultur. Strategien für einen nachhaltigen Kulturwandel (Creative Austrians II). Bundesministerium für europäische und internationale Angelegenheiten – Sektion für internationale Kulturangelegenheiten, pp. 66-72.
Video 05:39 min “Crude Oil Pump versus Honey Pump” addresses the tension between mechanistic and holistic thinking,reflecting in its opposing actions the current process of our human existence in relation to itsfoundations. Two pumps, one filled with crude oil and the other with honey, work against each other. The substancesare pressed against each other and separated again at random time intervals. In this symbolicconfrontation, an uncontrolled and dynamic process emerges. In the art context honey is connected to Joseph Beuys’ works on the sustainable social system of the beestate and his concept of the social sculpture.
This set of experiments was carried out on the riverbank next to the Department Petroleum Engineering building, with the participation of artist Herwig Turk, as well as Ernst Logar, Karez Abdulhameed, Patrick Jasik and Pit Arnold. A table was arranged to place the equipment on, surrounded by trees and accompanied by the slow flowing river of Mur, with the water close to the shoreline partially frozen. The first experiment investigated the concept of viscosity, using four different fluids: water, crude oil, honey and ketchup, each in a closed pipe with a metallic ball flowing through the fluid medium. The cylindrical…
For this set of experiments, Ernst Logar, Michael Hohenberger and Karez Abdulhameed visited the Chair of Thermal Processing Technology at Montanuniversität Leoben. The focus of the experiments was on the flammability of crude oil and the calculation of related parameters. The aim of their first experiment was to find out how many calories different samples of crude oil contain. For this they used a bomb calorimeter, crude oil samples and igniting threads. One gram of crude oil was weighed into the sample cup of the calorimeter, the igniting thread then wrapped around the electric wire and immersed in the crude…
Polish artist Kinga Kiełczyńska introduced a selection of her projects from the perspective of the economy of the artworks, that is in terms of how they are made, what materials are used, and what is left of them in the end. Kiełczyńska’s artistic approach and ecological consciousness are encapsulated in her “Reductionist Art Manifesto” (2009). Points such as “Instead of constructing unnecessary beings and polluting the physical and mental space use what is already created,” are not intended to be taken literally, but as a metaphor. Reflecting the manifesto, her film ten millions +1 (the activists) (2018-19) uses footage already…
Ernst Logar and Karez Abdulhameed visited the Chair of Petroleum Geology to learn more about rock formation. Petroleum geologists focus their research on the source rocks of crude oil, geological structure and rock mineralogy. Logar and Abdulhameed were able to observe the fluorescent effect of crude oil on oil-bearing rocks under ultraviolet light. There are three parameters the level of this fluorescent effect depends on: API gravity, microbe presence and temperature. A drill core also showed visible timelines of different geological eras and events. Each sedimentation layer holds marine life signatures, biomarkers, such as algae, which help identify the eras…
In his presentation “Petroturfing and the Oil Culture Wars in Canada”, Jordan Kinder, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Art History & Communication Studies at McGill University, Montréal, discussed his upcoming book about the emergence of Canada’s pro-oil movement during the 2010s. This movement presents Canadian oil as an economically, socially and ecologically progressive force, in particular on social media platforms, in an attempt to contribute to delaying and stifling a fair transition beyond the fossil economy. Kinder’s forthcoming book Petroturfing offers a critical analysis of the emergence of Canada’s pro-oil movement, which he traces back to the launch…
Cornelia Grobner – Unsichtbare Verführung mit fatalem Ausgang Erdöl ist tief in unsere zivilisatorische Identität eingeschrieben – im Alltag dennoch wenig präsent. In einer ungewöhnlichen Kooperation erforschen Künstler und Erdöltechniker die Substanz neu. [article in German]