Oily Stories is an artistic research project that experiments with the materiality of oil and its encounter with different materials, environments, structures, bodies and political forces. 

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The project investigates how the stories of oil can be told through various methods of situated storytelling. In the manner of oil, oily stories are leaked, spill out of the petroleum infrastructures, flow over boundaries and expand their environmental, political and social effects by polluting the grand narratives, “white geology” and subjugating forces. The stories of oil are retold through experimental writing, short stories, situated storytelling and drawing.

 

The project draws its initial material from oil sludge, broken oil infrastructures, deserts, and the wetlands of southwestern Iran. It searches for traces of oil in Iranian literature and listens to the stories, jokes, rumours and myths among indigenous people of the region and the workers of oil sites and refineries. The project will be exposed through performances, installations and publications.