Drill, baby, drill
Made and exhibited in 2025 at Chateauvillain (52) - Maison Laurentine
- "Drill, baby, drill" - An infamy among others...
"Drill, baby, drill" le slogan sonne comme une hérésie
Pour se faire élire, le businessman milliardaire
Aux compagnies promet de larges rentes viagères
Pour les écosystèmes, d'effroi nous sommes saisis
Mais le républicain à l'aura messianique,
N'en a cure d'aggraver la crise climatique
Faire du grand nord, de l'Alaska, un cimetière
Galvanisé par la propagation de "fake"
Il délire, se rêve en maître de l'univers
Voilà qu'il a rallié les géants de la "tech"
Une révolution ne serait pas dérisoire,
Artistique, poétique, elle porterait l'espoir...
G.M
Oak derrick (height 340cms, lenght 580cms, width 176cms)
Sphere of 181 stainless steel suspensions - a mirror-polished face and a painted face - 1,70 meters in diameter
Fans and VHS film strips
Pour se faire élire, le businessman milliardaire
Aux compagnies promet de larges rentes viagères
Pour les écosystèmes, d'effroi nous sommes saisis
Mais le républicain à l'aura messianique,
N'en a cure d'aggraver la crise climatique
Faire du grand nord, de l'Alaska, un cimetière
Galvanisé par la propagation de "fake"
Il délire, se rêve en maître de l'univers
Voilà qu'il a rallié les géants de la "tech"
Une révolution ne serait pas dérisoire,
Artistique, poétique, elle porterait l'espoir...
G.M
Oak derrick (height 340cms, lenght 580cms, width 176cms)
Sphere of 181 stainless steel suspensions - a mirror-polished face and a painted face - 1,70 meters in diameter
Fans and VHS film strips
DRILL, BABY, DRILL
A creation by Gilbert MARCEL in Châteauvillain (as part of the "dignity of beauty" event at the chameau site, former Castel Broc permises)
Kinetic art, Protest art and TRUMP's Extractive Territories.
Movement, resistance and devastation in the Anthropocène era.
Kinetic art : The mechanics of perpetual motion
Kinetic art emerged in the 1950s from a fascination with movement, speed and the industrial transformation of the world. The works of Yaacov AGAM, Victor VASARELY or Jean TINGUELY capture this modern intoxication : structures that move, vibrate, transform before the viewer's eye. But behind this aesthetic celebration of movement already hides a disturbing prophecy. Don't these artistic machines, with their visible gears and repetitive movements, echo the first drilling rigs that were beginning to perforate the earth to extract fossil energy ? Kinetic art, in its most troubling dimension, reveals our fascination with the mechanization of the world - this same logic that would soon transform entire territories into extraction zones. CALDER's mobiles dance in the air like so many stylized derricks. TINGUELY's motorized sculptures creak and clatter with the same obsessive regularity as the oil pumps already piercing the american landscape. Kinetic art unconsciously propheties the era of total extraction : it celebrates movement for movement's sake, speed for speed's sake, energy for energy's sake.
Gilbert MARCEL follows in the lineage of artists who no longer hesitate to take a stance against the misdeeds of the powerful of the moment, motivated solely by their endless appetite for power and money.
Protest Art : When aesthetics becomes resistance
Faced with this mechanization of the world, protest art emerges as a counter-movement. From Diego RIVERA's murals denouncing industrial exploitation to Ana MENDIETA's ecological performances, throught Situationist detournements, art becomes a weapon of resistance against extractivist logic. Protest art reveals what kinetic art masked : behind the aesthetics of movement hides the violence of extraction. When Robert SMITHSON creates his Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake, he reveals the troubling beauty of industrial landscapes while questioning our relationship to the earth. When Andy GOLDSWORTHY composes with natural elements, he opposes extractive logic with the aesthetics of collaboration with the living. Gustav METZGER's works on auto-destructive art anticipate ecological disasters. His sculptures that corrode under acid prefigure landscapes ravaged by hydraulic fracturing. Protest art becomes prophetic : it announces the disasters that kinetic art, in its technological innocence, had failed to foresee.
TRUMP's demented project : America transformed into extraction land
January 2025. Donald TRUMP declares a state of 'national energy emergency" on his first day in office. His slogan "Drill, baby, drill" is no longer electoral provocation but a government program. The American president announces his intention to transform the United States into total extraction land. Alaska, "bounty of natural riches", sees its environmental protections lifted with a stroke of the pen. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, sanctuary of biodiversity, becomes an authorized drilling zone. National parks, these cathedrals of American nature, open to oil companies. The scope of the project is staggering : TRUMP intends to "increase the area of territories open to oil and gas exploration (particulary in marine environments and the Arctics)", transforming Alaska into a zone that can be "riddled with bulldozers, chainsaws, oil wells, mines and quarries, fishing ports, pipelines, refineries, oil platforms and giga-tankers". The climate consequences are catastrophic : according to a study by carbon Brief, "no less than 4 billion additionals tons of CO2 would be added to US greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, equivalent to the conbined annual emissions of Europe and Japan". The reserves seem inexhaustible : American shale gas reserves were estimated in 2007 at 23304 billion m3, they reached 393779 billion m3 in 2021, "an estimate revalued by 1590%". For shale oil, the increases reaches "2005% in 2023 compared to 2007".
The synthesis of triptych : Towards an aesthetics of devastation / DRILL BABY DRILL
This triptych reveals a troubling truth about our era. Kinetic art celebrated the beauty of mechanical movement without seeing that it heralded the era of total extraction. Protest art attempted to resist this logic but could not prevent it. And today, TRUMP's project realizes the dystopian synthesis of these two movements : it transforms America into a giant kinetic artwork, where thousands of drilling rigs pierce the earth in an endless mechanical ballet. Hydraulic fracturing as total artistic performance ? Imagine the United Sates seen from the sky, riddled with derricks rising like so many kinetic sculptures. Pipelines draw geometric networks across the territory worthy of conceptual art. The flames of flares illuminate the American night with an apocalyptic glow. This is kinetic art carried to its demented paroxysm : an entire country transformed into an extractive machine. The aesthetics of the Anthropocene : What TRUMP achieves is the tranformation of kinetic art into a total political project. The perpetual movement of machines becomes the perpetual extraction of ressources. The beauty of mechanical movement justifies the destruction of the living. Kinetic art, stripped of all aesthetic consideration, reveals its true nature : an aesthetics of technical domination over the world.
Resistance as new protect art : Faced with this extracivist madness, a new protest art necessarily emerges. It's no longer about creating works in galleries but transforming ecological resistance into global performance. Each action against a pipeline becomes a work of art. Each occupation of threatened territory becomes an installation. Each act of civil disobedience becomes an performance.
Art in the era of total extraction
The triptych kinetic art / protest art / Trumpian extraction reveals the tragic destiny of Western art in the 20th century. Born from fascination with technique, it oscillated between celebration and resistance before seeing its own obsessIons realized in the most demented geopolitical project of our era. Today, faced with the transformation of America into a giant extractive machine, art can no longer be content to be kinetic or protest. It must become regenerative. It must learn from mushrooms that proliferate in the ruins of capitalism, as Anna TSING teaches. It must develop an aesthetics of collaboration with the living rather than domination over matter. Because ultimately, this triptych teaches us this : Kinetic art revealed our secret desire to transform the world into a machine, protest art attempted to resist this impulse, and TRUMP today realizes this demonic synthesis by transforming an entire continent into a total industrial artwork. we have yet to invent a fourth movement : an art that neither celebrates nor contests but collaborates. An art that learns from mycelium rather than the motor.
An art of friction rather than speed. An art of proliferation rather than extraction.
The stakes are no longer aesthetic but civilizational : will we be able to create an art that repairs rather than an art that destroys ?
Pierre BONGIOVANNI - 2025, Artistic Director of the Maison Laurentine, Exhibition Curator.
Kinetic art emerged in the 1950s from a fascination with movement, speed and the industrial transformation of the world. The works of Yaacov AGAM, Victor VASARELY or Jean TINGUELY capture this modern intoxication : structures that move, vibrate, transform before the viewer's eye. But behind this aesthetic celebration of movement already hides a disturbing prophecy. Don't these artistic machines, with their visible gears and repetitive movements, echo the first drilling rigs that were beginning to perforate the earth to extract fossil energy ? Kinetic art, in its most troubling dimension, reveals our fascination with the mechanization of the world - this same logic that would soon transform entire territories into extraction zones. CALDER's mobiles dance in the air like so many stylized derricks. TINGUELY's motorized sculptures creak and clatter with the same obsessive regularity as the oil pumps already piercing the american landscape. Kinetic art unconsciously propheties the era of total extraction : it celebrates movement for movement's sake, speed for speed's sake, energy for energy's sake.
Gilbert MARCEL follows in the lineage of artists who no longer hesitate to take a stance against the misdeeds of the powerful of the moment, motivated solely by their endless appetite for power and money.
Protest Art : When aesthetics becomes resistance
Faced with this mechanization of the world, protest art emerges as a counter-movement. From Diego RIVERA's murals denouncing industrial exploitation to Ana MENDIETA's ecological performances, throught Situationist detournements, art becomes a weapon of resistance against extractivist logic. Protest art reveals what kinetic art masked : behind the aesthetics of movement hides the violence of extraction. When Robert SMITHSON creates his Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake, he reveals the troubling beauty of industrial landscapes while questioning our relationship to the earth. When Andy GOLDSWORTHY composes with natural elements, he opposes extractive logic with the aesthetics of collaboration with the living. Gustav METZGER's works on auto-destructive art anticipate ecological disasters. His sculptures that corrode under acid prefigure landscapes ravaged by hydraulic fracturing. Protest art becomes prophetic : it announces the disasters that kinetic art, in its technological innocence, had failed to foresee.
TRUMP's demented project : America transformed into extraction land
January 2025. Donald TRUMP declares a state of 'national energy emergency" on his first day in office. His slogan "Drill, baby, drill" is no longer electoral provocation but a government program. The American president announces his intention to transform the United States into total extraction land. Alaska, "bounty of natural riches", sees its environmental protections lifted with a stroke of the pen. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, sanctuary of biodiversity, becomes an authorized drilling zone. National parks, these cathedrals of American nature, open to oil companies. The scope of the project is staggering : TRUMP intends to "increase the area of territories open to oil and gas exploration (particulary in marine environments and the Arctics)", transforming Alaska into a zone that can be "riddled with bulldozers, chainsaws, oil wells, mines and quarries, fishing ports, pipelines, refineries, oil platforms and giga-tankers". The climate consequences are catastrophic : according to a study by carbon Brief, "no less than 4 billion additionals tons of CO2 would be added to US greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, equivalent to the conbined annual emissions of Europe and Japan". The reserves seem inexhaustible : American shale gas reserves were estimated in 2007 at 23304 billion m3, they reached 393779 billion m3 in 2021, "an estimate revalued by 1590%". For shale oil, the increases reaches "2005% in 2023 compared to 2007".
The synthesis of triptych : Towards an aesthetics of devastation / DRILL BABY DRILL
This triptych reveals a troubling truth about our era. Kinetic art celebrated the beauty of mechanical movement without seeing that it heralded the era of total extraction. Protest art attempted to resist this logic but could not prevent it. And today, TRUMP's project realizes the dystopian synthesis of these two movements : it transforms America into a giant kinetic artwork, where thousands of drilling rigs pierce the earth in an endless mechanical ballet. Hydraulic fracturing as total artistic performance ? Imagine the United Sates seen from the sky, riddled with derricks rising like so many kinetic sculptures. Pipelines draw geometric networks across the territory worthy of conceptual art. The flames of flares illuminate the American night with an apocalyptic glow. This is kinetic art carried to its demented paroxysm : an entire country transformed into an extractive machine. The aesthetics of the Anthropocene : What TRUMP achieves is the tranformation of kinetic art into a total political project. The perpetual movement of machines becomes the perpetual extraction of ressources. The beauty of mechanical movement justifies the destruction of the living. Kinetic art, stripped of all aesthetic consideration, reveals its true nature : an aesthetics of technical domination over the world.
Resistance as new protect art : Faced with this extracivist madness, a new protest art necessarily emerges. It's no longer about creating works in galleries but transforming ecological resistance into global performance. Each action against a pipeline becomes a work of art. Each occupation of threatened territory becomes an installation. Each act of civil disobedience becomes an performance.
Art in the era of total extraction
The triptych kinetic art / protest art / Trumpian extraction reveals the tragic destiny of Western art in the 20th century. Born from fascination with technique, it oscillated between celebration and resistance before seeing its own obsessIons realized in the most demented geopolitical project of our era. Today, faced with the transformation of America into a giant extractive machine, art can no longer be content to be kinetic or protest. It must become regenerative. It must learn from mushrooms that proliferate in the ruins of capitalism, as Anna TSING teaches. It must develop an aesthetics of collaboration with the living rather than domination over matter. Because ultimately, this triptych teaches us this : Kinetic art revealed our secret desire to transform the world into a machine, protest art attempted to resist this impulse, and TRUMP today realizes this demonic synthesis by transforming an entire continent into a total industrial artwork. we have yet to invent a fourth movement : an art that neither celebrates nor contests but collaborates. An art that learns from mycelium rather than the motor.
An art of friction rather than speed. An art of proliferation rather than extraction.
The stakes are no longer aesthetic but civilizational : will we be able to create an art that repairs rather than an art that destroys ?
Pierre BONGIOVANNI - 2025, Artistic Director of the Maison Laurentine, Exhibition Curator.