Pump | Exhibition + Artist-Led Community Speakout + Potluck

The collective discussion will encompass the social experiences of oil: the mundanity of petroleum as a primary infrastructure for modern life, the violent exigencies of the petrodollar, and diasporic and immigrant realities within the wider lens of U.S. oil wars. Participants will also be invited to fill out Maryam Monalisa Gharavi’s “The Petroleum Questionnaire” which will be collected into a book volume. Facilitated by Aria Rostami. Pump takes motor oil and speculative oil imaginaries as grounds for exploring the most significant commodity of the modern era: petrol. Petrol rests on a paradox: it is as mundane as everyday automobile fuel or derivative for artificial food dye, yet as incendiary as a worthy proposition for wars waged on oil-rich sovereign nations. More materially, petrol’s status as both “dirty” (residue-stained hands at the gas pump) and “sacred” (holy, finite, precious) only deepens this paradox. Pump also revolves on oil speculation as a primary indicator for measurement in the U.S.A. imagination, namely optimism in the populace (qualified) and constant growth in the markets (quantified). Westward manifest destiny, upward-bound stock tickers for crude oil, synthetic oil-derived innovations of staggering diversity, even futurist propositions for exploration in outer space all necessitate a bottomless addiction for crude pipelines.