THE BLACK SEA FILES

The Black Sea Files is a piece of territorial research on the geography of the world’s oldest oil extraction zone – the Caspian. A giant new subterranean pipeline traversing the Caucasus will soon pump Caspian Crude to the West. The line connecting the resource fringe with the terminus of the global high-tech oil circulation system runs through the video like a central thread. However, the trajectory followed by the narrative is by no means a linear one. Circumventing the main players in the region, the video sheds light on a multitude of secondary scenarios. Oil workers, farmers, refugees and prostitutes who live along the pipeline are introduced and contribute to a wider human geography that displaces the singular and powerful signifying practices of oil corporations and politicians. Drawing on investigatory fieldwork by anthropologists, journalists and intelligence agents, the Black Sea Files comment on artistic methods in the field and the ways in which information and visual intelligence is detected, circulated or withheld.
The BSF are part of the visual research project 'B-Zone’ by Ursula Biemann, Angela Melitopoulos and Lisa Parks.
(Source: www.geobodies.org)