Everyone is welcome to join the network gathering and take part in a joint discussion following the two presentations (see abstracts below). Coffee and tea will be served.
The legacy of the Brent Spar battle: A multiscalar struggle over North Sea decommissioning
Peder Ressem Østring, PhD candidate in Human Geography, UiO
The North Sea is home to hundreds of oil platforms, thousands of deepwater oil wells, and an extensive network of pipelines. Following a dispute in the late 1990s between Shell and Greenpeace regarding the proposed dumping of the loading buoy called Brent Spar, regulations were put in place that, as a rule, prohibited deepwater disposal.
This presentation revisits the spectacular Brent-Spar case of the 1990s where civil society was able to out-maneuver the multinational company Shell, in a spectacular battle over different scales and over narratives. The presentation further asks what the implications from the Brent Spar case are two decades on, in a period where a wave of aging structures is expected to hit the mainland. Faced with this immense and costly challenge, we might see contradictory interests once again blossom into an open conflict over regulation and use of oceanic space.
Representations of bodily encounters with petroleum oil in Norwegian literature and theatre
Tomine Sandal, PhD candidate in Nordic Literature, UiO
Sandal's PhD project – Bodies of oil – foregrounds bodily encounters with petroleum oil in its various forms and associated infrastructures, by exploring how interactions between bodies and oil are represented in Norwegian contemporary literature and theatre. The dissertation asks: How do bodily and affective connections to oil manifest in novels, poems, dramas and theatre performances, and how do the depicted relationships between body and oil influence possible transitions from oil to other forms of energy? In this presentation, Sandal will discuss both literary and theatrical examples that reveal the trans-corporeal (Alaimo 2010) connections and entanglements between human bodies and oil, and the implications of understanding representations of such relationships as expressions of trans-corporeality.