PETROLOGICHE

PETROLOGICHE / OIL LOGICS

Artistic Project Conceived and Curated by Andrea Morucchio

In collaboration with: Interno 3, Galleria A+A, Laboratorio Morion, Politiche Giovanili del Comune di Venezia, Comitato per la Salvaguardia del Verde di Marghera, Assemblea Permanente Contro il Rischio Chimico di Marghera

Artists
Performance: MUTOID Waste Company, Jorge Escrache
Video: Mauro Arrighi, Cristina Barbiani, Matteo Bertelli, Fabio Bianco, Andrea Contin, Interno3, Daniela Manzolli, Margherita Morgantin, Marco Paties, Matteo Rosso, Esteban Vivaldi, Vera Renzo Brugin, Officina Plug_in, Stefano Bettini, Riserva Artificiale
Sound / Visual Set: Talk Show Host

PETROLOGICHE / Oil Logics is an interdisciplinary art project conceived and curated by Andrea Morucchio, presented in Venice during the final week of Carnival, February 19–24, 2004.
Through performances, video installations, and public actions, the project explored the environmental and social implications of the Petrolchimico industrial complex in Porto Marghera — one of Europe’s largest petrochemical hubs and a symbol of industrial modernity’s dark underside.

Blending artistic expression, political awareness, and collective participation, PETROLOGICHE sought to reactivate public consciousness of the environmental and human devastation caused by decades of petrochemical production. The project framed Marghera not merely as a local tragedy but as a paradigm of the global “oil logic”: an economic, political, and cultural system that legitimizes destruction in the name of progress, development, and profit.

The works presented — performances, video projections, and sound interventions — articulated the contradictions of these oil logics: their capacity to generate wealth while erasing justice, community, and ecological integrity. In Porto Marghera, these same dynamics allowed crimes against workers and the environment to go unpunished, while the legal and political system continues to protect industrial impunity.

Against this background, Petrologiche positioned artistic practice as a space of resistance and transformation. Art here is not an aesthetic refuge but a critical instrument — capable of producing awareness, generating discourse, and fostering civic engagement.

The MUTOID Waste Company, renamed for the occasion MUTOID Toxic Waste Company, realized a performance coordinated by the Assemblea Permanente Contro il Rischio Chimico. Their intervention transformed the Carnival’s festive atmosphere into a site of confrontation: performers dressed as “chemical workers,” moving through Venice’s crowded streets with handmade instruments and metallic percussion, evoked both the ritual of labor and the violence of contamination. The performance reactivated public space as a zone of tension — at once celebratory and subversive.

During the week, Galleria A+A hosted a series of video screenings by young artists from the Venetian area, each engaging with the Petrolchimico issue through diverse aesthetic approaches — from documentary reflection to experimental abstraction. Additional video and sound performances took place at Erbaria – Rialto, further expanding the project’s dialogical dimension.

The decision to present PETROLOGICHE during Carnival was strategic and symbolic. By intervening in Venice’s most globally visible event — a moment of spectacular consumption and media saturation — the project aimed to reclaim a collective voice amid the city’s transformation into a commodified “Disneyland.” The contrast between the Carnival’s spectacle and the project’s critical content underscored the urgency of confronting the ecological and democratic crisis shaping contemporary society.

Ultimately, PETROLOGICHE affirmed the role of contemporary art as an act of civic consciousness. Through the synergy of artists, activists, and citizens, the project proposed art as a language of resistance — one capable of revealing, questioning, and perhaps transforming the oil logics that govern both our environment and our imagination.

From the video footage Morucchio recorded during the project’s various events, he later produced the short film PETROLOGICHE, presented at the first edition of the Venice Film Meeting (2004), organized by the Circuito Cinema Comunale and the Venice Film Commission.