Daniel Leiter
Information
DE Katalogtext, Linnea Streit
ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP or Shell are dependent on the so-called “reserve replacement ratio”. This is the ratio between newly proven oil/gas fields and the amount of raw materials currently being extracted. If the RRR falls below 100%, the company will run out of oil in the long term, which alarms shareholders and causes share prices to fall1.
As oil and gas deposits become increasingly difficult to exploit, companies are being driven to use ever more destructive methods to locate them - most recently using artificial intelligence in Greece2.
Like in a scene on a faraway beach, sun umbrellas bend under the heavy wind load. In the exhibition space itself, however, there is no wind at all - in fact, dozens of motors and cables running through the umbrellas generate the wind, which seems like an alternative truth. The wind blows in the objects, just as progressive extractivism destabilizes ecosystems - hardly immediately noticeable, but nevertheless veritable.
The “reserve replacement ratio” is one of the indicators of the interdependence of daily share price and exploitative practice. The wind blows on the basis of real-time share prices of the most important producers of petrochemical raw materials, which are downloaded from the Internet. The current percentage share price fluctuation is converted live into motor movement, thus generating a simulated wind whose gusts increase as the share price rises. If the share price falls, the virtual wind flattens out.