Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas: Druzba, Oil and Peat

Starting with the Druzhba research project, the artists will explore the cultural, political, and geographical territories that unfold in a fictional journey along the world’s longest oil pipeline, which connects Siberian oil fields with Europe. The project’s psycho-geographic readings of this massive infrastructure reveal mechanisms of power and submission that should belong to the colonial past but are very present today.

Launched in 2003, Urbonas’ Druzhba project uses interviews, videos and archival materials. The research follows the flows and energies produced by a disintegrating infrastructure of power and links the story of the Druzhba pipeline to personal anxiety and the idea of friendship. Continuing their inquiry into the infrastructures of extraction, Urbonas developed ‘the Swamp’ research, which argues that architecture must embrace the swamp as a way to decolonize and de-school itself. Drawing on the Amphibian Pedagogy as a method of artistic practice, the artists will discuss examples of hybrid practice that navigate the emergent knowledge and “landing on Earth.”