Oil

Première 28. 2. 2025, Mini teater

Running time 3 hours, with one intermission.

In Slovenian and English with Slovenian and English surtitles.

Post-performance discussion with the artists.

Director and music composer Jan Krmelj

Authors of the text Jan Krmelj, Jernej Potočan, Jernej Gašperin, Diana Kolenc, Mojka Končar, Gašper Lovrec, Lucija Ostan Vejrup, Filip Mramor

Dramaturg Jernej Potočan

Stage designer Lin Japelj

Script of objects animation Jan Krmelj, Jernej Potočan, Jernej Gašperin, Diana Kolenc, Mojka Končar, Gašper Lovrec, Lucija Ostan Vejrup

Costume designer, visual creation Brina Vidic

Video interventions Filip Mramor

Cast

Jernej Gašperin, Diana Kolenc, Mojka Končar, Gašper Lovrec, Lucija Ostan Vejrup

Oil is a performative mosaic that combines lecture procedures, documentary tehater, sound installations, and manifest. The performance explores the intertwined worlds of data capitalism, oil extraction, and radical collective actions. The staging, through two parts, Anthropocene and Pyrocene, draws from an extensive archive where the voices of the subversive podcast (O.I.L.) intersect with the lives and works of members of the artistic collective R.Mutt.

Oil is a product of geological chance. It is no coincidence that this is also the story of a documentary filmmaker connected to the oil industry, a Russian neurologist torn apart by war, a wealthy Polish anarchist who renounced her past, a German musician who erases his own music as it is created, and a Danish artist whose performance unintentionally enables the rise of actual extremists.

Oil is a story about refuges in a time of the end of the world, about a utopia in a time that seemingly allows no alternatives. An autonomous zone within a world that is burning and collapsing inward.