Slippages in Time: Oil, Sovereignty and Media
- Public Trust
- 4017 Walnut St.
Screening and Conversation with Sanaz Sohrabi
About the Film
Sanaz Sohrabi's An Incomplete Calendar (2025, work in progress), explores the formation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1960 as the first international oil alliance from the Global South. OPEC was celebrated by its members as an anchor for national sovereignty over natural resources and a new path for national development. Its geopolitical influence was deeply intertwined with other coterminous decolonial projects and political currents between 1960-1980 such as the Arab Petroleum Congress (Cairo 1959) and Non-Aligned Movement. Energy sovereignty as a catalyst for cultural production during this period has remained largely unexamined. In this essay film, conceived as a collective conversation, Sohrabi draws on philatelic and photographic archives to chart out how oil’s evolving visual cultures were mobilized to connect diverse national publics across geographical borders in the era of raw material sovereignty.
About the Artist
Sanaz Sohrabi is a researcher of visual culture and an artist-filmmaker. Working with essay film and installations, she explores the shifting and migratory paths of images, situating them within a continuum of their historical relations and archival temporalities. Sohrabi is currently working on a feature-length documentary that maps an unlikely geopolitical calendar of political affinities, competing and contradictory national projects wherein oil was both the agent of imperial power and the catalyst for anticolonial political projects.
This event is part of Non-Aligned Visions, a multimedia installation on display from September 15-19, 2025 that features contemporary artistic explorations of transnational solidarities from the 1960s and 1970s. Bringing together the work of archival researchers and visual media-makers, this project unearths memories of the past to guide us in the struggles ahead. More information about the installation can be found on Public Trust's website.
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