Counter-Visualities of Extraction: Archival Frictions in the Afterlives of Petro-Colonialism

Abstract

This interview examines the film practices of Sanaz Sohrabi and Nariman Massoumi, two artists of Iranian origin whose works explore the visual legacies of petro-colonialism in the Persian Gulf. Through a critical analysis of corporate film and photographic archives, the filmmakers reveal how cinema and photography historically functioned as technologies that simultaneously legitimized narratives of modernization while concealing labor struggles, socio-environmental violence, and structural inequalities. The formal strategies employed by these artists approach the archive as a dispositif marked by absences, silences, and extractive logics. The conversation considers how their works destabilize dominant scopic regimes, reactivating buried histories of resistance. Through this interview, we see how contemporary film practices grounded in archival materials can open new genealogies of the Persian Gulf’s visual history, transforming extractive visualities into sites of critical reinscription and ecological and political attunement.