Mi†ra presents ‘nine-sum sorcery’ a collaborative project of Studio LABOUR, Hani Mojtahedy, Enes Güç, Zeynep Schilling, and Evelyn Bencicova.’nine-sum sorcery’ premiered at Berlin Atonal 2019 as live audio-visual performance work, later adapted as a video piece for gallery exhibition and online setting.

“nine-sum sorcery” is an audio-visual piece composed of three chapters – “The Wheel”, “Cyclone” and “Xerodrome”.’nine-sum sorcery’ draws inspiration from Reza Negarestani’s theory-fiction book “Cyclonopedia”, which imagines oil as a sentient being. ‘nine-sum sorcery’ is a project initiated by studio LABOUR.

1st chapter

The Wheel

They lay deep, under the pressure of thousands of tons of earth and rock. Prehistoric organic matter accumulated beneath the ground. Pure energy that the earth had repressed down from a specific form to raw black energy juice.

Petroleum was formed as a tellurian entity, under unimaginable pressure and heat in the absence of oxygen and between the strata, in absolute isolation. A typical, Oedipal case, then, a typical case of repression, welling up from the depth. It is insane with greed. It lends an inhuman proportion to our thirst.

(text from: Reza Negarestani – CYCLONOPEDIA: Complicity with Anonymous Materials)