Project by Dillys Onyenashia Olise @arc_nashiao
Recent political events such as the seizure of oil tankers carrying Venezuelan crude, caused me to wonder why the U.S. feel they can claim and control Venezuela’s resources. To understand this relationship, I researched the period of the oil boom. U.S. oil companies began to tap into Venezuela’s largest oil bank, Lake Maracaibo. Creole Oil, the top producer, commissioned SOM to design a new self-sufficient company town for its U.S. and Venezuelan employees. The masterplan was an importation of the U.S. suburb to Venezuela’s landscape. By the 1950s, oil camps became symbols of a “U.S.-sponsored“ modernity.
This project returns to the oil camp as a site of cultural implantation and economic exchange. Centering baseball (the one remnant of U.S. cultural imperialism in Venezuela) in everyday life, this project proposes a transformation of the oil camp from a historical site of cultural imperialism to an economic engine for Venezuela’s future.
