Process landscapes of petromodernity

The products of the petrochemical industry, and especially catalytic processes, are central to the historical process of modernity and the Anthropocene. This project examines petromodernity through exemplary constellations—here, the Port of Rotterdam—as an epoch in which technological access to oil and gas has organic-biotic and economic-political, but also epistemic-cultural consequences. Our programmatic goal is to investigate the rationality of the epoch as “fossil reason” and subject it to a critique that takes account of its necessary replacement.