about:

The Sun, in Reza Negarestani's theory-fiction work "Cyclonopedia", is described as an obliterating force. In his mythos, the Sun is a totalizing, even totalitarian force which binds the Earth to it. The Earth is not without its own power and agency, however. In this artwork, The Sun is depicted with branching lines which grasp out into the corners of the frame, and encover a being of undulating liquid forms. This being is representative of Negastrani's depiction of the sentience of Oil. Oil is, for Negarestani, a narrative lubricant of the world; understanding the sentience of Oil and its character makes communicable the strange contradictions of modernity; global warming, wars, and politics, are all suspiciously oily. Oil is the malicious insider, whose influence on the Earth leads to a desertification, rendering the earth a plane of refraction of the Sun. Negotiating with elements in our world as subjects rather than objects, as Negarestani does by inserting a sentience into the sun or in oil, is a tendency among philosophic re-imaginings of ecology. Reframing our world with subjectivity within ecologic forces may prove to shift us away from an anthropocentric tendency which has evoked the current ecologic crisis.