Atlas of Petromodernity

The Atlas of Petromodernity is many things in one: historical and geographical non-fiction, cultural theory essay, and picture book. In forty-four short essays, inspired by an equal amount of pictorial findings, Klose and Steininger develop a technical, geographical, political, and speculative panorama of the declining era of petroleum modernity. The authors stroll through Baku, Rotterdam, and Louisiana, into Manchuria and through the Vienna Basin. They read Bertolt Brecht, technical manuals, and petroculture theory, and they listen to Neil Young. They go to the moon, through refineries and over highways emptied by the COVID-19 pandemic. They confront petrochemistry with petromelancholy, catalysis with catharsis, cosmos with cosmetics. The Atlas of Premodernity tackles the contradictory ambivalences of a substance that has been vital for our epoch, and whose roles and meanings need to be understood in order to be able to leave this epoch behind. ; Foreword by Stephanie LeMenager 13 Atlas 19 Drill Record 29 Upstream/Downstream Exploration 37 Drilling Fluid 43 Pumpjack 49 Pipeline 53 Molecular Mobilization 63 Science-Fashioned Molecules 71 Men and Petroleum 75 Engine 83 Sprawl 89 Ammunition 97 Greenhouse 105 Oil Encounters Oleoviathan 113 Pierced Earth 121 Schlumberger 125 Adventurers 129 Baku 135 The Great Leap Forward 143 Priceless 149 Rocket 159 Louisiana 165 Petroporn 173 Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art 181 Posidonia Shale 189 Eichmann 195 World Cultural Heritage 201 Core Sample 207 Plankton 213 Animals in Oil Fields 219 Frontier of the Technosphere 223 Burning Soil 229 Regard Eloigné The Song of Styrene 235 Temporal Abyss 241 Black Mirror 247 True Oil 251 Terminator 257 Black Square 263 Space Travel 271 Data Is the New Oil 277 Burning Man 285 St. Barbara 293 Epilogues Cannonball 301 Zombie 309 List of Figures 323 Bibliography 327