Maryam Monalisa Gharavi – Dirt, Debt, Death, Data

Dirt, Debt, Death, Data by Maryam Monalisa Gharavi

SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022

16 October 2022

Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Oil, the 20th century’s most important non-renewable resource, lies at the centre of discourses on ecological peril and financial oppression, though its colonialist history has faded from view. In a lecture performance enacting a liquidation of Mideast history, speculative exploration, extractive economics, and fictional representation, the artist debuts a one-person collective called Oil Research Group (ORG). ORG is propelled by the concept that ‘data is the new oil’, coined in 2006 by British mathematician (and customer loyalty card inventor) Clive Humby. Oil is a finite source at the very core of both global financial markets and #nofuture petroleum wars; information, seemingly infinite, also ‘leaks’ into the collapsing tripartite structures of governance, markets, and society. The digital self is sticky, like a bird after an oil spill. Moving along the axis of four Ds: dirt, debt, death, and data, ORG traces the finitude and preciousness of our dominant technologies, along the way testing assumptions about the material and immaterial ways in which we are connected, addicted, fossilised, and one hopes, liberated in their wake.

Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 took place at various locations in Amsterdam, interweaving an exhibition, sound performances and discourse programme, accompanied by artist presentations, workshops, excursions and more. As a part of the Biennial programme, the Leaving Traces symposium opened up a forum in which to become attentive to pollution’s invisible, yet harmful touch. Actively rethinking our relation to the climate and our planetary legacies, an array of artists, researchers, curators, and scholars spoke of the many faces of toxicity – from fossil fuels to plastic, from nuclear energy to chemical pollutants. The gathering staged real stories and events of exposure, thinking about ‘leaving traces’ not just as the material act of spreading toxicity, but as art’s potential to reach out and act as a disruptive force in the world.

Find out more at https://sonicacts.com/archive/biennial2022

Credit:

Curation & production: Sonic Acts

Recording: Engage! TV

Sound mastering: Monty Mouw

Design: Catalogtree

Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros

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