Fossils

Around the oil field discovered in the town of Heletz in 1955, dreams of economic independence and geopolitical power began to take shape. However, the field proved to be a small and insufficient source, and oil extraction there was eventually halted permanently. Since then, the site has stood abandoned. Israel has remained at the heart of an ongoing global struggle over energy resources, particularly oil, which continue to profoundly shape the political and social agenda.

Playing on the term “fossil fuels,” we carried out a performance action that sought to create a series of “fossils” by immersing objects in crude oil, at a site that forms part of the story of oil in Israel and of the Zionist ethos, as well as of the global industry that shapes our lives, especially in light of our strategic position as a junction connecting East and West.

A fossil serves as a bridge between past, present, and future, it preserves information about the life and environment of the period in which the organism existed; it helps us understand the geological and biological processes unfolding today, and assists us in anticipating the possibilities of future events.

In this way, the action seeks to “petrify” the local present as inseparable from the global, in an effort to create a retrospective gaze upon ourselves as a society, so that we may imagine the possibilities of our social, cultural, political, and ethical future.