DARK LAKE RITUAL

Sound Installation, 6-90 speakers, variable dimensions, 2017.

The work “Dark Lake Ritual” consists of sound portraits of individual oil pumps on the Bibi Heybat oil fields in Baku. Each pump performs a mechanical movement defined by seemingly endless repetition. Although their movements appear almost identical, each machine produces a distinct sound, shaped by mechanical irregularities, wear, and material differences. The installation condenses the acoustic landscape of the oil field by reducing the physical distances between the pumps to the much smaller distances between the speakers in the exhibition space. Sounds and rhythms that are dispersed across the territory are thus brought into simultaneity. The pumps emerge as individual actors within a collective ritual: a petro-industrial sound choreography unfolding across the topography of the oil field.