Hydrocarbon chains are the base material for all plastics. They know not what they become; they simply proliferate. In the animated video “Hydrocarbons,” by extracting and manipulating a clip from "The Inside Story of Modern Gasoline," a 1946 industrial lm, endless chains of anthropomorphized (and uncomfortably racialized) hydrocarbon molecules connect and dance until they blot out the screen. Hydrocarbons are indeed dispassionately lively actors, taking an indiscriminate variety of forms: they may be rotting garbage, gasoline, laundry baskets, or corpses—all energy and potential. I wanted to make a piece about petroleum at its structural level. I also wanted to make a cartoon in the classic sense — using cute characters as a subversion. While researching archival material to appropriate for this purpose, I found this (public domain) promotional lm, funded by the auto industry. The brevity and cartoonish explanation of how hydrocarbon atoms form chains was clear, and absurd. This tiny clip was a great base, from which to amplify the accumulation of these hydrocarbon polymers, as the carbon and hydrogen atoms bond together into polymers that cannot be unchained. I left the original clip as unadulterated as possible, rotoscoping accurately the sequence of one hydrocarbon bond, and left the sound in place as well. The compound e ect over time, using simple rules of multiplication, overwhelms all empty space: methodically claustrophobic. By characterizing these atoms, the original creators could not have been neutral, starting with the choice to render them in white and black. While it is accurate that hydrogen atoms are half the size of carbon atoms, the material is visibly racist in its personi cation of characteristics and roles. The hydrogen atoms are white and depicted as dainty, cheerful, hapless helpers. The carbon atoms are black and are typical renderings of cartoon blackface. In “the eld,” the carbon atom does the “work" of chaining polymers. The animation designers depict carbon atoms as beasts of burden, more capable of the heavy lifting. In America—particularly in the antebellum South—this quality of strength and beastliness was attributed to enslaved AfricanAmericans. Since 2012 when I made this work, discussion about the explicit connections between the forces of capital that extract both human biopower and non-human natural resources has become more commonplace in cultural studies. Leaving this connection in tact in my rendition of that tiny clip was instinctive, but is, in my opinion, an accurate mirror of dominant perceptions about who and what can be exploited.
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Marina Zurkow, 2019