Iridescent Kuwait: Petro-Modernity and Urban Visual Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century
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Author: Laura Hindelang
Petro-modernity is a local phenomenon essential to the history of Kuwait, while also a global experience and one of the prime sources of climate change. The book investigates petroleum’s role in the visual culture of Kuwait to understand the intersecting ideologies of modernisation, political representation and oil. The notion of iridescence, the ambiguous yet mesmerising effect of a rainbow-like colour play, serves as analytical-aesthetic concept to discuss petroleum’s ambiguous contribution to modernity: both promise of prosperity and destructive force of socio-cultural and ecological environments. Covering a broad spectrum of historical material from aerial and colour photography, visual arts, postage stamps and master plans to architecture and also contemporary art from the Gulf, it dismantles petro-modernity’s visual legacy.
ISBN 9783110714661. Birkhauser Verlag. pb. 272 pages. 29 b/w, 67 colour ills. 24 x 17 cm. .
available
Petro-modernity is a local phenomenon essential to the history of Kuwait, while also a global experience and one of the prime sources of climate change. The book investigates petroleum’s role in the visual culture of Kuwait to understand the intersecting ideologies of modernisation, political representation and oil. The notion of iridescence, the ambiguous yet mesmerising effect of a rainbow-like colour play, serves as analytical-aesthetic concept to discuss petroleum’s ambiguous contribution to modernity: both promise of prosperity and destructive force of socio-cultural and ecological environments. Covering a broad spectrum of historical material from aerial and colour photography, visual arts, postage stamps and master plans to architecture and also contemporary art from the Gulf, it dismantles petro-modernity’s visual legacy.
ISBN 9783110714661. Birkhauser Verlag. pb. 272 pages. 29 b/w, 67 colour ills. 24 x 17 cm. .
available