GT23 - Mackenzie Champlin - Abruptly Laid To Rest

ABRUPTLY LAID TO REST cultural practices for a new world

Radical climate activism has shut down oil and gas production, destabilizing governments and reshaping social conditions in the process.

In response, communities bond closer together and repurpose former sites of oil and gas production for public use.

As a means of both realizing the end of fossil fuels, and finding new ways forward, the sites grow into spaces defined by the rituals developed in pursuit of a new peace.

Extraction

Fox Hills Oil Field

Los Angles, CA

Transportation

Midway-Sunset Oil Pipelines

Kern County, CA

Refinement

Torrance Oil Refinery

Torrance, CA

The production of gasoline is orchestrated across a network of sites.

From the oil field to the gas station, petroleum travels across landscapes, occupying territory from the countryside to urban centers.

Leases are handed over by both private landowners and government contracts. The profits are split.

If these spaces were abruptly severed from their extractive and productive capacity, how would and should we engage them?

The project will be realized as a film that navigates five sites of oil production now adapted into cultural spaces as part of a new funeral ritual.

The oil field is now a cemetery. It is no longer a site of extraction, but a place where we put back - the new burial practice deterring future extraction.

The gas station - the place where journeys begin - is now a funeral home. Death takes time, and the body is prepared to be carried from urban areas to its final resting place.

Along the way the body visits other sites in a ritual where it is prepared, celebrated, and remembered.

The film develops an extended metaphor, exploring the process of death in an individual human sense and in the death of an industry.

Fable Data

PRODUCTION DESIGN

SCARS OF RECENT CONFLICTS

Marks from recent uprisings landscapesdisfigure from urban centers to remote drilling fields.

El Segundo Refinery Fire, 2033

Carson Terminal Blockade, 2028

ANONYMOUS MONUMENTS

The remains of infrastructure, now inert, populate the landscape as lasting reminders of a fossil economy that forever changed the planet.

Shipbreaking #27, Edward Burtynsky

The Monuments of Passaic, Robert Smithson

Dust Storm, Midway Sunset Oil Field

AUGMENTED MEMORIALS

Spaces once controlled by the fossil economy are returned to common use.

Interventions carve out the old while memorializing the actions that brought about radical change.

After ALife Ahead, Pierre Huyghe

Memorial Barricade to the Diliman Commune, Toym Imao

ABUSED ECOSYSTEMS

Sites long polluted by the fossil economy are gradually placed on a path to recovery.

Oil Spill #12, Daniel Beltra

Oil Spill, Nigeria

ECOLOGICAL REMEDIATION

Biological systems digest toxins while mechanical interventions mitigate spread and further disbursal.

Water Hacynth, Rhizofiltration

Talbert Marsh Remediation, Huntington Beach

PAN CULTURAL RITUALS

The proposed funeral practices borrow from global cultures while imagining a new process that embraces diverse ideologies.

Dakota Scaffold Grave, Native American Burial Platform

Towers of Silence, Zoroastrian Funeral Cinerary Urns and Funeral Pyre, Roman Creamtion

THE OIL FIELD

THE GAS STATION

THE REFINERY

THE TERMINAL

THE PIPELINE

THE SUPERBLOOM

mackenzie champlin sci-arc graduate thesis 2023