LumsdenGB

OIL launch, Thursday 7th November 6-7pm GMT
Book online for the event here.

Join us for a presentation and discussion with OIL publication author and editor Rachel Grant (Fertile ground, Aberdeen), Sam Trotman (Programme & Partnerships Director Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Lumsden, Aberdeenshire), Kathrin Böhm (Myvillages) and Scott Herrett (Just Transition Organiser for Friends of the Earth Scotland and member of Friends of St. Fittick’s Park, Aberdeen).

This publication has developed from ‘Oil as far as the eye can see – Energy regimes in the everyday’ a tour curated and guided by Rachel Grant that took place across Aberdeen, as part of Myvillages’ Summer Camp titled ‘Who Has the Energy’, commissioned, produced and held at Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Lumsden, July 2023.

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Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire have been defined by oil’s discovery offshore in the North Sea. The way oil shapes places is particular. Between villages such as Lumsden and the city of Aberdeen as the gateway to the sector, its impacts are complex and have varying levels of visibility. The tour and this subsequent publication aims to locate and confront current and future energy infrastructure in Aberdeen and surrounding areas. The journey is reflected in the publication’s three parts, drawn from different oil-related spaces through the concepts and practices of ‘LIFELINES’, ‘PRACTICES OF REFUSAL & REDISTRIBUTION’ and ‘RENEWAL’.

The conversation between Rachel, Kathrin and Sam started in 2021, and an online conversation on art, oil, interdependence and complicity took part in conjunction with British Art Show 09 in Aberdeen in October 2021.

The launch of OIL extends the local discussions and conversations of the day into a trans-local place of recognising shared practices of refusal and redistribution on collectivised cultural work and shared support structures.

OIL was an invitation from Myvillages to write about the particularities of local economies in the context of the Rural School of Economics taking place at SSW from 2019 – 2024. It has been published by SSW and Myvillages and is the third publication in the Rural School of Economics series, following Rural Life in Hamar, Ethiopia (2022) and Zburazh Art Book (2024). It was commissioned by SSW as part of the BE PART Programme. The publication is available to read .

Summarising three years of working together on the SSW blog.

On working together in a very local and trans-local way, with Lumbung documenta marking an important new space for making and thinking.

What sustains the Community Making Space? This question has been key to the making and negotiating of this new space. Located within the site and organsiation of SSW but open to use, the space relies on a broad range of contributions to exist and sustain itself.

These go far beyond financial means (which undoudebtly are very important) and include many of the ideas we asked during "Who has the energy" summer camp the previous year. It includes the tangible and non-tangible, the more-than-human, easy to quantify and less easy to quantify, the individual and the collective.

To show the diversity and range of economic underpinnings that enabled the Community Making Space in its pilot year, we have summarised a visual diverse budget, that lists and names the many different contributions.

Compiled by Kathrin, Sara and Sam, designed by An Endless Supply.