SAVA: Petro-Socialism

The SAVA panel on Petro-Socialism addresses the infrastructures of oil extraction, from the politics of pipelines to the construction of the first off-shore oilrigs, petrobartering in the transfer of technology and expertise, the operations and environmental impacts of chemicalization, and the naturalization of socialist petroculture in the visual arts.

In her talk From here to eternity: past, present and future of the Caspian Oil Rocks, Leyla Sayfutdinova (Senior Lecturer in Critical Area Studies, University of Glasgow) examines the history of the Soviet Union’s first offshore extraction facility, Oil Rocks, which was built in 1949-1958 in the Caspian Sea some 100 km away from Baku. Celebrated at the time as yet another instance of the Soviet conquest of nature, it soon became technologically outdated with the development of semi-submersible drilling platforms in 1960s. But despite this, Oil Rocks remain a site of active, if diminishing production of oil and gas, ongoing ecological disaster due to poorly sealed wells, and a late industrial ruination prone to technogenic accidents. Her presentation explores the temporality of this project of high Soviet modernity, and discuss how Oil Rocks are inscribed in the narratives of the past, present and future of oil in Azerbaijan.

The presentation Caspian Oil on Canvas: Socialist Petroculture in Azerbaijani Art by Maja and Reuben Fowkes (SAVA UCL) investigates the environmental art history of oil exploitation in Soviet Azerbaijan. What do artistic representations of the industry reveal about the status of the oil worker within the petroculture of fossil socialism? How did artists celebrate oil-powered social and industrial progress, articulate the ethos of ‘commanding the Earth to serve Socialism’, discover in the severe style a match for the harsh struggles of the Caspian oil pioneers, capture the sublime of socialist modernity and naturalize the unique oil heritage of the Absheron Peninsula? And in the year that Baku is set to host the COP29 Climate Summit, is techno-utopianism the only pathway for green transition?

SAVA Research Fellow Jan Burek will speak on Building and Contesting the Chemical Future: the Development of the Polish Petrochemical Industry and the Struggle against Water Pollution, 1958-1969. The decision to construct the Druzhba pipeline significantly altered the plans for the development of the Polish economy in the late 1950s. Thanks to Soviet oil, Poland was supposed to enter a new era of prosperity and modernity with synthetic materials made from cheap petrochemicals not only fulfilling local needs but becoming extremely profitable exports. The sleepy, medieval town of Płock where a refinery and petrochemical plant connected to the pipeline was erected was to become a beacon of this bright chemical future. Around the same time, however, the pollution of water connected with the progressing chemicalization of the economy became a cause of concern for various state and non-state actors. A problem that the construction of the pipeline and Płock plant only exacerbated and brought to the attention of the wider public due to the conspicuous olfactory nature of petrochemical pollution.

Curator Rado Ištok (National Gallery in Prague) will give a presentation entitled From Basra to Kralupy: Czechoslovak oil refineries in Iraq. In the history of the oil industry, the year 1976 was

marked by two events in Czechoslovakia: first, the oil refinery in Kralupy near Prague was put into permanent operation, and second, the book Černé miliardy [Black Billions] on the history and politics of oil extraction by the Czech journalist Jiří Hronek was published. Interestingly, the oil refinery in Kralupy benefited from some of the expertise which the Brno-based company Chepos developed during the construction of the oil refinery in Basra in southern Iraq, launched in 1974, as also observed by Hronek. Since 1969, during the last two decades of the Cold War, Czechoslovakia – alongside other socialist countries – was instrumental in the development of Iraq’s nationalised oil industry – until then dependent on the British and US-American expertise – in exchange for convertible currencies or petrobarter. His presentation is based on collaborative work with visual artist Jiří Žák and draws on materials from the archives of Czech television.

About the Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts

The Socialist Anthropocene in the Visual Arts (SAVA) is a visual arts led interdisciplinary research project that challenges the West-centric discourses of the Anthropocene by asserting the constitutive role of the environmental histories of Socialism in the formation of the new geological age. Led by Dr. Maja Fowkes at UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, the project was selected for a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC) and is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). www.sava.earth