The Museum of Oil

Territorial Agency (Italy, Finland, United Kingdom)

Galata Greek Primary School

“We need to keep oil in the ground. The difficult, growing and expanding understanding of human impact on the Earth’s system leads to a simple gesture, a simple intimation: Keep it in the ground, where it has been for millennia. Of course, this intimation seems to many unattainable. Firstly, who should keep it in the ground? We should? And why not them? We need to keep oil in the ground, yet it is the very core of our world and our economy. If we would keep it in the ground, our lives would need to change radically. Our institutions would need to be rethought. The Museum of Oil is a new institution in the making… Its aims are direct: to put the oil industry in the museum; to make it a thing of the past.” –JP, ASR

Territorial Agency’s The Museum of Oil documents the spread of the oil extraction industry across the whole planet in a vast continuous web. A set of huge highly detailed maps of this vast technological landscape loom over the visitor. These shocking images are a call for action, magnified by a series of videos and data visualizations that consider the complex negotiation needed to gradually wean ourselves from oil by turning the planet itself into a museum.