BLACK SEA FILES

DVD 43 min.
The video project investigates the oil geography of the Caspian basin and the Caucasian corridor: the world’s oldest oil extraction zone.
At the example of the giant oil pipeline presently under construction, the project looks at the relations between the transnational flow of resources, capital, people and images in this highly political terrain.

Black Sea Files trace the logistic technology of the pipeline, engage with the people who live along side its trajectory and narrate related events taking place elsewhere. Circumventing the main players in the region, the documents open secondary scenes to the ones presented in the news, naming and coding the oil corridor and the people who are affected by and involved in the transformations that are taking place in this post-soviet area.

Drawing on investigatory fieldwork as practiced by anthropologists, embedded journalists and secret intelligence agents, the Black Sea Files comments on artistic methods in the field and the ways in which information and visual intelligence is detected, circulated or withheld.

The Black Sea Files is part of a collective research project titled B-Zone – Becoming Europe and Beyond, funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Germany and based at the Institute for Theory of Art and Design, HGKZ Zurich, Switzerland

http://www.geobodies.org/art/artprojects/Blacksea.html