This post introduces Elysia French’s recent article in the Mobilizing Museum Minerals special issue of Museum and Society edited by Eleanor S. Armstrong and Camille-Mary Sharp, “Exhibiting the Extractive: Bitumen in Fort McMurray.”
The foundation for the article included in the Mobilizing Museum Minerals editorial can be traced back to when, in the summer of 2015, I visited Fort McMurray, Alberta to conduct field research for my dissertation. I was interested in studying how the oil industry was mobilizing visual culture to advance its cause, and while there, I became fascinated by how the methods of a local museum were also at play. At the time, I took a Suncor-sponsored tour that provided access to some of their restricted operational sites. The tour began and concluded at the Fort McMurray Oil Sands Discovery Centre and served as a kind of multisensory curatorial project that mirrored many of the exhibitions found at the centre. As explored in the article, the tour projected the company’s view of extraction through visual representations that utilized a settler-colonial and extractive-capitalist narrative of the more-than-human environment. Touring those physical sites of industrial bitumen extraction had a visceral and lasting impression on me—which has also supported continued relational thinking about bitumen (as a natural element, as material, as geology, as a resource, as capital, as site of extraction and harm).
Touring those physical sites of industrial bitumen extraction had a visceral and lasting impression on me—which has also supported continued relational thinking about bitumen.
Now, nearly a decade after that initial research trip, I write this introductory post feeling grateful to Drs. Eleanor S. Armstrong and Camille-Mary Sharp for the opportunity to revisit the experience and the work that emerged thereafter. I am appreciative of their thoughtful and collaborative review process, as well as the clarity offered by the reviewers. Revisiting earlier research and writing, alongside that tourist experience, also led me back to relevant resources I had since filed away, which necessarily did not make it into the Mobilizing Museum Minerals article. For instance, I returned to a 1950s advertisement campaign by Shell found in LIFE magazine, which felt heavier to engage with than when I first encountered it.1 Now, writing from the position of an early career scholar and new(ish) mother, Shell’s “B is for Baby” held additional affective layers of meaning. It reads: “Baby at the tender age of three minutes, he was bathed in a soothing petroleum product. Soon after, he used baby lotions, bottle nipples, bibs and a lot of other b’s that could come from petroleum. These started him on his way to the 37,805 gallons of oil he’ll use during his life (lots of it from Shell, we hope).”2 I continue to acknowledge and trouble the ubiquity of oil to my daily life, yet was left uneasy while I contemplated the relationship between “B is for Baby” and ‘B is for bitumen’. I am sure the unease was, in part, because I was prompted to confront the reality that my son’s newborn skin, only minutes old in the hospital, was met by a “soothing petroleum product” before my own skin.
“B is for Baby,” was just one advertisement of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet used in a campaign to promote the importance of oil in daily life. This Shell campaign in LIFE offered readers the opportunity to contemplate “Shell from A to Z—An Alphabet of Good Things About Petroleum.” As another point of reference, readers could also consider: “E is for Engine”; “K is for Kindergarten”; “L is for Laboratory”; “M is for Mother”; and “A is for Agriculture: Farmers grow few things without oil. Not just oil and gasoline that make cars, trucks and tractors go. Shell research makes possible other farming aids—fertilizers, pesticides, ingredients for animal medicine. Oil helps the farmer farm, helps bring better foods to your table.”3
With the campaign, Shell highlighted the presence of oil in our everyday objects and activities—ultimately, establishing an increasing modern dependency on bitumen. Although today we can see in this campaign how Shell made visible the human relationship to the more-than-human world, the company did so to heighten public awareness of the significance of and dependency on oil to the sustainability of modern lifestyles, albeit in celebratory terms that work to occlude the environmental and social consequences of this growing cultural dependency. I share a brief personal reflection and return to these advertisements here because, however dated the content may seem today, the fundamental objective of the advertisements remains hauntingly relevant: highlighting technological advancement in the process of normalizing the culture of oil to effectively maintain industry’s ability to operate—hidden in plain view, ubiquitous in our everyday lives.
The fundamental objective of the advertisements remains hauntingly relevant: highlighting technological advancement in the process of normalizing the culture of oil to effectively maintain industry’s ability to operate—hidden in plain view, ubiquitous in our everyday lives.
With the article, I set out to explore some of these complex relationships through an examination of the environmental and social implications of the visual culture of the Alberta tar sands within the larger frameworks of hegemonic colonial and capitalistic narratives. The research and case studies in this article look at common visual tropes used by industry to document the tar sands and ultimately contribute to the visual language of this broader culture of oil. Generally, the result is that prevailing industrial visual narratives seek to hide, normalize, or erase environmental and social degradation. The Suncor tour, for instance, offered a curated, first-hand encounter with the restricted-access (private property) sites of the tar sands. It was an attempt by industry at representation. Alongside the Oil Sands Discovery Centre and other media campaigns, the tour offered the opportunity to explore the multiple forms of visual culture produced by industry as aligned with the methodologies of the museum. This industrial perspective advanced the question of visibility and access showing how industry enables the persistence of dominant colonial and capitalist narratives that aid in a continued industrial “invisibility.”
Visual narratives are important modes of inquiry and key tools of public engagement for understanding pressing environmental and social concerns.
The article addresses critical issues in the visual culture of oil, contributing to revealing the seemingly invisible oil infrastructures and relationships between the human and more-than-human worlds. Visual narratives are important modes of inquiry and key tools of public engagement for understanding pressing environmental and social concerns. By identifying them and drawing them out through the context of bitumen and the tar sands, this research attempts to counter the tendency to render bitumen extraction invisible in the age of increasing environmental concern. Sheena Wilson, Adam Carlson, and Imre Szeman identified the growing need for an energy transition, concluding that an energy transition “involve[s] not only a change in the kinds of energy we use, but also a transition in the values and practices that have been shaped around our use of the vast amounts of energy provided by fossil fuels.”4 These observations highlight the increasing interconnectedness and dependencies between the human and more-than-human worlds during the period of extractivism. I would also point to the significance of visual culture in the creation and sharing of counter narratives and alternatives to the current culture of oil—“B is for Baby”—necessary perspectives in light of increasing political rhetoric, energy crises, climate change, and peak oil.
Feature Image: “Oil Sands Discovery Centre (15240730565)” by Wilson Hui from Calgary, Canada is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Notes
1 I was first introduced to the advertisement campaign by Dr. Elizabeth Barrios during a talk for the Southeastern College Art Conference (Pittsburgh: October 21–24, 2015).
2 The Shell Companies, Shell From A to Z: An Alphabet of Good Things about Petroleum (B is for Baby). Shell Advertisement in LIFE Magazine. May 13, 1957: pages 170-171.
3 The Shell Companies, Shell From A to Z: An Alphabet of Good Things about Petroleum (A is for Agriculture). Shell Advertisement in LIFE Magazine. May 6, 1957: pages 18 and 19.
4 Sheena Wilson, Adam Carlson, and Imre Szeman, eds., Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), 4.
