(S)OIL
What if we ‘detoured’ a disused petrol station into a vision of what comes after the end of oil? Taking control of the decommissioning process to plant and nurture sunflowers - harnessing and testing their soil remediating power in public spectacle as live scientific and artistic experiment.
What if a former petrol station becomes an invitation to remake our relationship with nature, the city and the systems we live in and a practical hub for abundant ways of powering ourselves and our communities.
“Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye—”
We haven’t got a petrol station YET. So we are working with another future relic of our fossil fuelled culture - a 1996 Ford transit recovery vehicle. It is our research and development vehicle - an experimental field laboratory on wheels, fuelled by sunflower oil and fuelling the work and collaboration needed to make this happen. From it we map out potential petrol station sites for occupation, gather soil samples, test and grow sunflowers and create a mobile library of knowledge as we go, hosting workshops and making artworks in collaboration with the sunflowers and the people and places we visit and meet along the way.
(S)OIL begins intensive, participatory research, development and collaboration this year (2025) and we’re really happy to receive a small grant from a Horizon Europe project called VOICE (https://www.voice-community.eu/). Through artist-led interventions (ATSIs), VOICE encourages citizen engagement to tackle local and regional environmental challenges effectively.
This period involves building key collaborations that include Dr Lorna Anguilano, director of the Experimental Techniques Centre at Brunel University and co-founder of Phyona. Thanks to London Fire Brigade’s Petroleum Enforcing Authority Team.
