Conversation
Marjolijn Dijkman & Oliver Ressler
In a conversation with editorial collective member, Marjolijn Dijkman, Ressler discusses his work on the Technology Centre Mongstad, the world’s largest testing facility for industrial-scale carbon capture technology located in Norway. Oliver Ressler’s film, Carbon and Captivity, critiques the shortcomings of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology itself. An artist and filmmaker, Ressler’s work often intersects with activism on social, political, and environmental issues like climate breakdown. He highlights the contradictions and fallacies of “sustainable” extractivism and the geoengineering projects that support it, urging instead a move to truly clean forms of energy.
Abstract: While growing carbon emissions cause the climate crisis, and international agreements aim to lower emissions to restore climate resilience, fossil companies are developing ways to extract oil and gas ‘“sustainably” with the help of geoengineering projects like carbon capture and storage (CCS). The Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM), 67 km north of Bergen in Norway, is the world’s largest testing facility for industrial-scale carbon capture technology. Oliver Ressler’s film, “Carbon and Captivity,” produced in 2020 at the TCM site, explores the intricacies of CCS technology against the backdrop of climate activism and restoration. The film’s structure, incorporating multiple perspectives and a poetic-political narration, aims to raise awareness and inspire action amidst the urgency of the climate crisis. Oliver Ressler is an artist and filmmaker known for exploring social, political, and environmental issues. This conversation focuses on Ressler’s artistic practice, which often intersects with activism and explores themes such as climate breakdown. He critiques the shortcomings of CCS technology, highlighting its energy-intensive nature and potential for leakage, advocating instead for a shift towards clean energy solutions.
Oliver Ressler, “Climate Feedback Loops”, 2-channel video installation, 2023. Installation view: “Oliver Ressler. Dog Days Bite Back”, Belvedere 21 – Museum of Contemporary Art, Vienna, 2024. Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna © Bildrecht, Vienna
MD: Marjolijn Dijkman (Interviewer)
OR: Oliver Ressler (Interviewed)
MD
Before discussing Carbon and Captivity, I’d like to start with your artistic practice in general. Could you say something about the main concerns and challenges in your artistic work, and in your research on the effects and causes of climate change?
OR
Many of my works look at climate breakdown from the perspective of activism. Mass civil disobedience seeking to avert the production of new climate-destructive infrastructure or disrupt it where it already exists is often central: struggles against coal, coal harbors, fossil fuel power stations and airports, and highway blockades. But I have also made work on climate breakdown without direct reference to resistance: for example a 2-channel video installation on climate tipping points recorded on the Arctic archipelago Svalbard, or work focused on carbon capture and storage, a key technology for petroleum corporations which the public knows far too little about.
MD
You have been working with these themes for a long time. How has your approach evolved throughout the years?
OR
In general, the way I approach themes is by trying to choose formats, strategies, and visual concepts according to specific situations and contexts. These usually vary from project to project. I have worked like this for three decades, using many different media – videos, video installations, photographic work, photomontages, objects, drawings – with a wide variety of strategies within these media. I also work on books, organize conferences, and curate exhibitions, all of which can be seen in terms of my engagement with particular themes.
Oliver Ressler, “Carbon and Captivity”, 4K video, 33 min., 2020. Courtesy of the artist; àngels, Barcelona; The Gallery Apart, Rome © Bildrecht, Vienna
MD
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology involves the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industrial processes such as steel and cement production or from the burning of fossil fuels in power generation. The carbon is transported via ship or pipeline from where it was captured and is often stored deep underground in geological formations. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that in order to achieve the ambitions of the Paris Agreement and limit future temperature increases to 1.5°C (2.7°F), intensified effort to reduce emissions is not enough: we must deploy technologies like CCS to remove carbon from the atmosphere as a form of climate restoration. Many new storage facilities have recently been built or are in development worldwide, and there is a strong belief at a political level and among multinationals that techno-fixes and geoengineering projects like these can help save our climate. Your film addresses certain flaws and problems in CCS technology, such as possible leakage and the risk of delaying renewables. You insist that the emphasis should be on transitioning to clean and sustainable energy rather than investing in technologies that perpetuate reliance on fossil fuels. Could you elaborate on the main points of your critique in the film?
OR
Unhappily, but unsurprisingly, the Paris Agreement has already failed. In 2023, because of increased carbon emissions, the global temperature rose by 1.5°C in relation to pre-industrial levels for the first time in human history. It is extremely likely that 1.5°C will be exceeded in the coming years too. If carbon emissions go on increasing at this rate, we are heading for 3-4°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. It should not astonish anyone that the Paris Agreement failed: it didn’t even mention coal, petroleum, gas or so-called “free trade.” Nor did it specify clear and binding decarbonization paths.
Radical measures are needed if 1.5°C is not to be exceeded even more drastically, but governments worldwide have shied away from applying them. What is definitely not needed is carbon capture and storage (CCS). It requires far too much energy to extract the carbon. Then it requires a whole new infrastructure to be built, e.g. pipelines (whose production itself emits a lot of carbon) to transport the CO2 for storage underground. And at the end of the day, maybe after a few decades, the carbon will eventually leak. This technology only delays the problem and shifts it onto the shoulders of coming generations. For the industry, it’s nothing new to inject gas into oil fields. The process is known as “enhanced oil recovery”: CO2 is injected into almost exhausted low-pressure oil fields to force out the remaining oil. The main difference is that this time, the industry wants the technology subsidized by states as “climate technology” – a purported solution for a problem caused by the same industry itself, the same industry that spent years denying its responsibility for global heating. It’s obscene.
MD
Yes, I understood that TCM has operated since 2012 as a joint venture between the Norwegian state, Equinor, Shell, and Total. How do oil corporations’ shifting strategies – from funding climate change denial to advocating technological procedures for “sustainable extraction” through carbon capture and storage – reflect broader challenges for effective climate action and restoration within the political and economic context?
Oliver Ressler, “Carbon and Captivity”, 4K video, 33 min., 2020. Courtesy of the artist; àngels, Barcelona; The Gallery Apart, Rome © Bildrecht, Vienna
OR
Petroleum corporations denied responsibility for climate breakdown for as long as possible. But once people were better informed about the deadly consequences of burning fossil fuels, the corporations changed their strategy. The playbook is this: they came up with the idea of “carbon footprints”. By means of this concept, climate breakdown – knowingly caused by the corporations for the sake of their profits – is made to look like something “we all” are at fault for. Never mind that the corporations earned hundreds of billions of euros with their business model and did (and still do) anything possible to delay the transition away from fossil fuels.
In Stavanger (Norway), there is the Petroleum Museum, sponsored by Equinor, Total, Repsol, and ConocoPhillips. The visitor is asked: “What are you willing to change to reduce your carbon footprint?” The CEO of Exxon – one of the largest petroleum corporations, aware of the dangers of global heating since the 1970s – argued in an interview that big oil wasn’t responsible for climate breakdown: it was supposed to be the fault of people unwilling to pay for clean energy transition1. CCS is just one part of the corporations’ campaign to continue extracting petroleum. They don’t care whether the technology works. They hope it will at least help to delay the unavoidable exit from oil, that’s all.
Oliver Ressler, “Carbon and Captivity”, 4K video, 33 min., 2020. Courtesy of the artist; àngels, Barcelona; The Gallery Apart, Rome © Bildrecht, Vienna
“In order to build the power plant, the government said, then you need full-scale cleaning of CO2. That was planned in this area. But this project was put to rest. There was a lot of discussion in the media in Norway about it. But nothing was implemented. So now TCM is just a test facility. And we do not have any plans for storage at this site, because it is very small. You could build a bigger one and store it. Norway has a couple of storage projects going on, in the Northern Lights. That means they are cleaning CO2 from a cement factory, and also a waste regeneration factory, and they are transporting the CO2 that is captured – or at least this is the plan that they are going to do it – onto boats to the west coast of Norway, and then pump it to an empty oil reservoir in the North Sea.”
Fragment from a TCM engineer speaking in the film Carbon and Captivity, Oliver Ressler, 2020
MD
Could carbon storage technologies help extract existing carbon from the air and restore the climate?
OR
The best way to remove carbon from the atmosphere is to plant trees and protect existing forests. But what we see globally is yet more logging to make space for cattle or to grow cash crops for export to the Global North. We also see unprecedented wildfires that destroy forests and their capacity to absorb CO2, with even more carbon released by the burning. But it is also true that after decades of irresponsible inaction by governments worldwide, we are now in a situation where it seems that the huge quantities of carbon in the atmosphere cannot be reduced without resorting to technological intervention.
MD
Do you think that we should abandon geoengineering entirely?
OR
Let me phrase it like this: first, all new fossil fuel exploration and construction of new fossil infrastructure (e.g. LNG terminals) must be stopped, and what remains must be used to build the carbon-neutral infrastructure of the future. Second, we need to begin international programs of reforestation. This goes hand in hand with a massive reduction of the consumption of meat to make available the space required for reforestation. Third, certain kinds of technology will need to be installed. But definitely not the CCS type on the wish list of the petro-criminal complex. There is more effective and cheaper technology available, e.g., direct air capture, which has existed and functioned successfully for decades (for example in submarines). But of course, direct air capture will only be introduced if someone pays for it. My hope is that those corporations who made profits by wrecking the climate will be forced to pay. Andreas Malm also argues for the introduction of direct air capture, but socializing the means of removal is necessary. It might also make sense to socialize fossil fuel producers altogether and convert them into organizations for capture and storage2.
Oliver Ressler, “Carbon and Captivity”, 4K video, 33 min., 2020. Courtesy of the artist; àngels, Barcelona; The Gallery Apart, Rome © Bildrecht, Vienna
MD
Did you collaborate or exchange with other scientists, activists, or community members in research for the film? What kind of resources and investigation methods did you use in your research?
OR
I am always in exchange with activists and scientists while working on projects. What they know (or sometimes do not know) helps me to formulate a specific perspective for the film. During my research for Carbon and Captivity, I was in touch with University of Bergen scientists whose work focuses on CO2 storage sites and so on, but I decided not to interview them in the film itself. In general, I’m trying to move away from films based on interviews.
MD
Are there specific sources that are interesting to look out for?
OR
Articles in The Guardian and Geoengineering Monitor were really helpful in developing my argument.
MD
You filmed at the TCM site and interviewed one of their employees, so I wondered about the exchange with them. Are people working with these technologies and the policies behind them part of the audiences you hope to address?
OR
I do not see the employees of petroleum corporations and related research facilities as my audience. I think it is useless trying to convince profiteers of climate-destructive technologies to abandon them. They can only be stopped by legal means, and sometimes through political pressure or acts of sabotage.
Oliver Ressler, “Carbon and Captivity”, 4K video, 2020. Installation view: “Oliver Ressler. Dog Days Bite Back”, Belvedere 21 – Museum of Contemporary Art, Vienna, 2024. Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna © Bildrecht, Vienna
MD
How did TCM respond to your film?
OR
The day the film Carbon and Captivity came out, Equinor got in touch and asked for the inclusion of a disclaimer in the film or the accompanying text. I thought it would be a great idea to get an official statement by Norway’s petroleum corporation! But they never sent the statement. I think it was probably a question from one employee in the PR department, never followed up by his colleagues or superiors.
We need to understand that carbon capture and storage technology deepens
dependence on the fossil fuel economy.We need to understand this technology as pretext for indefinite postponement of the worldwide end of fossil fuels.
We need to understand that some technology that is dreamed up will not become reality, that certain technical problems will forever resist being solved.
We need to understand that social change may sometimes make technology its vehicle but will never allow it to drive.
We need to understand that technofixes must preserve the conditions that fostered them, that trying to “solve” climate change with capitalist technology means giving up all hope of social justice, which means surrendering the climate too.
We need to understand that the forward-marching technology of determinist dreams is armed machinery, designed to keep human life lined up meekly behind.
We need to understand that the main appeal of CCS for the fossil industries lies in the huge new subsidies it promises the industry.
We need to understand the exceptional standard of the lies thanks to which it counts as common sense to say we need more fossil facilities – the biggest ones ever – to power the carbon capture that would let us extract yet more oil.
We need to understand that CO2 pumped into old oilfields will squeeze from them even more oil; that the pump and squeeze – “Enhanced Oil Recovery” to the industry – is classified as “climate technology” and entitled to public subsidy.
We need to understand that fossil corporations funded climate change denial for a quarter century while their own scientists plied them with proofs of disaster.
We need to understand that this constitutes a crime against humanity.
Fragment from the narration of the film Carbon and Captivity, Oliver Ressler, 2020
MD
As your website describes, Carbon and Captivity is structured in four chapters, introducing various perspectives through spoken voices. The film interweaves shooting at and around TCM with a tour through the site, a poetic-political narration text, and a dense sound design. I find it interesting when artworks find the right balance between an intuitive and poetic artistic approach and staying close to the complex issues of the contexts they address. This approach is also one you often seem to take within your work. Could you say something about the role of poetry in relation to the topics you address?
OR
In all my projects, I try to find a specific form and language that somehow relates to the complexity of a specific situation. The structure with four chapters, which all follow different visual concepts, is a response to the fact that only a minority of people know what CCS is. It forced me to bring in different perspectives. Even though there’s a bit more discussion about CCS four years after the completion of the film, it is still not yet widely known what it is. In the second chapter, I allowed the perspective of the corporation to be part of the film, explaining the technical nature of the process. So then I needed to add another chapter confronting that corporate perspective. In this section, I sought to communicate directly with the audience, hoping to find potential allies in the struggle for life on Earth. Each of the sentences began: “We need to understand.”
Since scientific facts sometimes appear not to be enough to activate people, I tend to experiment a bit with language. To insist on using certain terminology and to quite consciously avoid using other terminology is important to me. Terms such as “climate change” or “global warming” simply do not express the urgency of the problem and the action needed. It makes sense to replace these terms with alternatives. I generally use “climate breakdown” or “climate disruption”, but I love it when, in the process of collaborating with Matthew Hyland, strong new terms such as “global heat death” emerge. Matthew is a brilliant writer based in London who has been collaborating with me on texts for many years.
Oliver Ressler, “Carbon and Captivity”, 4K video, 33 min., 2020. Courtesy of the artist; àngels, Barcelona; The Gallery Apart, Rome © Bildrecht, Vienna
MD
Are you actively involved in any specific climate justice organization? How do you see the role of art and artists within these movements?
OR
Involvement in social movements is not just a matter of organizing and participating in demonstrations or blockades, it involves many different tasks. These can include organizing child care, cooking, raising funds, doing legal work or mental support. Being with a camera during direct action you also take on certain responsibilities beyond documenting action and making the action known to a wider public when screening the work. The presence of a camera in direct action often reduces police violence; this is really important for those of us on the ground. Artists and art workers are involved in climate movements in many different capacities: as community organizers, as designers of actions, doing PR for the movements, creating visual identity, and public outreach. So, artists are active in all areas, far beyond simply being responsible for visual identity.
MD
The carbon that will not be extracted is probably the best carbon storage. As an artist, I have reduced my carbon emissions in the last few years by working locally and using only land and sea transport. This way of working started during the Covid-19 lockdowns and has significantly influenced my work and the contexts I relate to. How do you deal with the emissions caused by your artistic practice, and have you changed your way of working over the years to reduce emissions?
OR
I think we have to be very careful breaking down all global emissions to consumption and describing climate breakdown as a problem of individual behavior. The idea of the individual carbon footprint was introduced by the petroleum corporations at a point when climate denialism was simply not possible anymore. Statistics show that 100 corporations are responsible for 70 percent of all global emissions. That shows clearly where our focus should be: on corporate emissions. And very few can choose how to heat the places we live in, or how to generate the electricity we consume. I don’t drive, and I hate cars, but I have to recognize that in many parts of the world, it’s impossible to get to work without driving.
Acknowledging these facts does not mean there is no responsibility of the individual. Of course, it makes sense to take public transport or ride a bike instead of driving, or to use trains instead of flying. It makes a big difference to stop consuming meat. But these personal actions won’t be enough without changing the institutional structures that continue to destroy the world. In my personal case, many of my works are videos or video installations. Most of my exhibitions don’t need any transport, no shipping of crates. I take the night train to European destinations wherever possible, I don’t eat meat. But for some destinations, I depend on flying, and I believe it is justifiable to fly for the production of new work, which will then reach an audience of ten thousand people or more. I feel we need to create alliances between different progressive actors, movements, and organizations to broaden our social movements and to become intersectional. This also means establishing personal connections with people, including internationally. As isolated individuals, we won’t be able to stop the destructive energy of capitalist production.
MD
Yes, we need to stay connected and try to rupture the carbon fabric. Let there be cracks!*
*The longest-running large-scale carbon sequestration experiment to date, the Sleipner field carbon sequestration trial in the North Sea, has been cited as
proof that carbon dioxide can be sequestered reliably under the seabed. Yet in 2013, unexpected cracks were found in the reservoir. A senior researcher
concluded: “We are saying it is very likely something will come out in the end.”
Let there be cracks.Not cracks in seabed depo sits.
But cracks in capital. Fractures and fissures that shelter rebellion.
Broadcasting news from nowhere.
Bending the poisoned present out of shape.”
Fragment from the narration of the film Carbon and Captivity, Oliver Ressler, 2020
Marjolijn Dijkman & Oliver Ressler
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The Commodity Frontiers Initiative (CFI) is a network of scholars, research teams, artists, and civil society organizations from all over the world. With more than 25 partner institutes, CFI collaborators have been working extensively on global commodity production, rural societies, labor history, the history of capitalism, and social and ecological frictions and capitalist fixes in the global countryside. Collaborators have published some of the most important books, articles, and reports in their fields. Together they are expert on a wide range of global commodities, covering all the principle producing regions of the world, from the early modern period to the present day, employing a range of approaches from social and economic history, anthropology, sociology, political science, ecology, and development studies.
The Commodity Frontiers Initiative aims to systematically catalogue, study and analyze a wide variety of commodity frontiers over the past 600 years. By providing a long historical perspective on problems that are often assumed to be modern, and linking historical and contemporary research, the Initiative endeavors to recast our thinking about issues of sustainability, resilience, and crisis and thus contribute to the politics of our own times.
The CFI operates through the leadership of Mindi Schneider (Brown University), Sven Beckert (Harvard University), Eric Vanhaute (Ghent University), and Ulbe Bosma (International Institute of Social History).
We currently organize four main activities. First, the leadership’s agenda-setting article, Commodity frontiers and the transformation of the global countryside: a research agenda, was published in the Journal of Global History in 2021 . The paper anchors our ongoing work in the CFI. Second, with our CFI Editorial Board, we publish a bi-annual journal called Commodity Frontiers that convenes multidisciplinary and multisectoral approaches to particular commodity frontiers, from mineral, to human bodies, to “renewable” energy. Third, we are compiling a Lexicon of commodity frontiers through a series of overtures and keyword conversations among international scholars. Finally, we are launching a series called Global Conversations on Commodity Frontiers that will explore new books, articles, and initiatives related to the Initiative.
