Carbon and Captivity – Oliver Ressler, 2020

Oliver Ressler is one of the few who has researched CCS, creating a narrated short film with stunning visuals on testing facilities in Norway in 2020. His account is as follows:

For decades, nation states and politicians have proven unable to decarbonize the economy. Oil corporations have funded climate change denial for a quarter century while their own scientists plied them with proofs of disaster. At a moment when most people feel the effects of climate change in their own lives, oil corporations have changed their strategies and are now pushing for the generalized use of technological procedures that would allow them to continue extracting oil whilst claiming to be sustainable.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is presented as technofix to prevent catastrophic global warming. The idea is to extract carbon dioxide in the refinery process and to transport and store it in sub-seabed formations. But CCS remains a relatively immature technology: investigations in 2013 showed cracks in North Sea seabed rocks where carbon was stored in field tests. This suggests the likelihood of leakage and the release of carbon into the atmosphere. The technology also requires a huge amount of energy and is therefore far too expensive to be applied on a meaningful scale. The world’s largest facility for testing carbon capture technologies on an industrial scale is the Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM), 67 km north of Bergen in Norway. This film was recorded there. TCM has operated since 2012 and is a joint venture between the Norwegian state, Equinor, Shell and Total.

The appeal of CCS for the fossil industries lies in the huge new subsidies it promises. The oil and gas should be left in the ground and a fully funded transition to a post-oil economy begun immediately, but the large-scale introduction of CCS would delay the necessary decarbonization, deepening our dependence on the fossil fuel industry. The film’s title refers to humanity’s “captivity” within the logic of capitalism, which seems to carry extractivism onward to the point of no return.

“Carbon and Captivity” is structured in four chapters, introducing various perspectives through spoken voices. The film interweaves shooting at and around Technology Centre Mongstad with a tour through the site, a poetic-political narration text and a dense sound design.

Oliver Ressler is an artist and filmmaker who produces installations, projects in public space, and films on issues such as economics, democracy, migration, the climate crisis, forms of resistance and social alternatives.

Ressler has had solo exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; Centro Cultural Conde Duque, Madrid; Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Egypt; The Cube Project Space, Taipei; Kunsthaus Graz, Graz and comprehensive solo exhibitions at Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk; Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz; Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo – CAAC, Seville; SALT Galata, Istanbul; MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; Cultural Centre of Belgrade; Belvedere 21, Vienna.

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