Black Sea Files is a territorial research on the Caspian oil geography: the world’s oldest oil extraction zone. A giant new subterranean pipeline traversing the Caucasus will soon pump Caspian Crude to the West. The line connecting the resource fringe with the terminal of the global high-tech oil circulation system, runs through the video like a central thread.

However, the trajectory followed by the narrative is by no means a linear one. Circumventing the main players in the region, the video sheds light on a multitude of secondary sceneries. This pipeline is a geo-strategic project of some political impact, not only for the powerful players in the region, but also for a great number of locals: farmers, oil workers, migrants, prostitutes who come into profile and contribute to a geography that displaces the singular and powerful signifying practices of oil corporations and oil politicians. These are the subjects that make their appearance in the video, turning the technological adventure of the pipeline project into a complex human geography. It’s not a view from the top down, the way corporate planning likes to do when they decide on the course of the trajectory, but an engagement with the people who relate to this piece of infrastructure which will transform the meaning of their living space. The intention is to read the movement and displacement of people not as an isolated phenomenon but in connection with the flow of resources, capital and images. Because this project is not only about oil, land and power, but also, and foremost, about problems of representation.