Sites and Sights of Oil: Archival Regimes of Extraction in Iran

The archival fieldwork I will be conducting at the British Petroleum Archives will contribute to a larger doctoral dissertation, titled “Sites and Sights of oil: Archival Regimes of Extraction in Iran,” investigating the relationship between colonial archival practices of documenting the extraction of oil and the media and cultural infrastructures enabling this process. My research-creation project investigates an overlooked visual analysis of the role of photography as an embodied technology of petrocultural visuality and eradication which worked in tandem with the larger extractive industry in Iran and the larger Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. By conducting a visual ethnography of oil, and with a particular focus on the historical ethnographic photographic archives produced by the British Petroleum during its early operations in Iran, I examine the visual representational regimes of oil through the nexus between colonial modernity, social history of oil, and media infrastructure. Since my doctoral stream is researchcreation, this research is also accompanied by a practice-based artistic component which is conceived as a documentary essayfilm and multimedia installation that seek to re-imagine these contested archives to creatively configure counter-narratives of petromodernity and to problematize their colonial imaginaries.

Faculty Supervisor:

Krista Lynes

Student:

Partner:

University of Warwick

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

Concordia University

Program: