This ongoing series of large-scale digital drawings, titled 100 Suns, continue my investigations into the ways in which newfound and existing exploitation of hydrocarbons on the African continent is in many ways an extension of the colonial-era legacy of mercantile capitalism. Coupled with a contemporary resource-grab scenario that pitches oil producing nations within the region as one of the new energy frontiers, with numerous developed and developing economies – internationally – competing for the secure exploitation and export of these natural resources. This context as a whole is understood and defined within the broader scenario of ‘peak oil’ supply in the contemporary global market place.
100 Suns series
Luanda, Angola, 2029
Archival inkjet print on cotton paper
2750 x 1100 mm
2010
Edition 3
To date the 100 Suns series have concerned principally Angola, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea - they manifest hybrid, fictional and critical projections of what these cities could look like in the not-too-distant future, given their growing status as net exporters of crude oil. The idea of the sprawling, soaring metropolis – both achievable and fantastical - have loomed large in prophetic fiction. Plans to supersede the world’s tallest skyscraper of the day (currently the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, U.A.E.) have frequently appeared as novelty segments in world news throughout the last century. The current skyscraper forecast is the ‘megastructure’ – an impossibly huge edifice that architects propose will supply everything a dweller could need or want from work and leisure. Had it been built, Sir Norman Foster’s 1999 proposal - The Millennium Tower in Tokyo Bay - would have been 800 metres tall, three times the size of the Eiffel Tower. But most of these ostentatious plans are usually the result of egomaniacal fantasy - like Le Corbusier’s Radiant City or Wright’s Mile-High Illinois. Yet the pursuit of scale as a visual signifier of affluence and power still holds its appeal. The high-rise metropolis is the recurring setting of where the people of tomorrow will be (or supposedly should be) living - usually all driving cars in the sky and living in minimally furnished apartments hundreds of stories in the air. From Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to both Bladerunner films and The Fifth Element – a constant signifier of the future is always high density living at great scale, usually a melting of Tokyo, Shanghai and New York.
A commitment to commerce reduced human beings to numbers or quantities, but the city’s size also offered opportunities for exploration and growth, personal as well as economic. While ‘the sphere of life of the small town is, in the main, enclosed within itself’ (1), the inner life of the metropolis ‘extend in a wave-like motion over a broader national or international area’. (2) The economic imperatives of the city might ‘hollow out the core of things’ (3) and flatten distinctions between people and objects, but it was an expansive environment: in the city, ‘the individual’s horizon is enlarged’. (4) It was easy to get lost in the metropolis; it was also possible to define oneself anew.
– Bukatman, S.; Blade Runner; British Film Institute; London; 1997; pp. 11-12
(1) Simmel, G.; The Metropolis and Mental Life in Donald N. Levine (ed.); On Individuality and Social Forms; University of Chicago Press; Chicago; 1971; p. 325; (2) Ibid.; pp. 334-5; (3) Ibid.; pp. 330; (4) Ibid.; 334
Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, 2023
Archival inkjet print on cotton paper
2250 x 1100 mm
2010
Edition 3
The 100 Suns series are drawn from this fictional, visual history and borne of research into the highly complicated and obdurate machinations of political life within the three countries they represent (Angola, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea) – historically, the present-day and conjecture as to possible future scenarios. The overall optic is one of a critical optimism, coupled with legacy issues around the notion of the resource curse. The series looks to the largely negative effect oil extraction has had historically in countries like Kuwait, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, coupled with conjecture as to the possible futures or these African countries, now integral players in the global energy race.
Oil has, from its very inception been an international commodity, and over the past 150 years it has systemically grown to be supplied globally. It has allowed us as a species to use tomorrow’s energy, to create 24 hours of sunlight, to grow astronomically in our capacity to produce food, technology, cities, wars and even more humans. That oil is traded and transported internationally is by no means a new phenomenon – what is precedent is its global demand. Until recently it was principally the first world that used any meaningful volume of oil – the current global ‘peak oil’ scenario is the result of a steady climb in demand from the developing world, coupled with a systematic depletion of domestic oil production within these first world countries, and the growing cannibalisation of domestic production by oil producing nations themselves over the past 30 years. Without significant volume other viable energy alternatives, a cycle of rising crude oil prices followed by systemic economic collapse will continue in a ‘peak oil’ age.
Lagos, Nigeria, 2027
Archival inkjet print on cotton paper
2500 x 1100 mm
2010
Edition 3
Offshore Cabinda 2042
Archival inkjet print on cotton paper
2000 x 1400 mm
2018
Edition 3
Wallpaper* magazine April 2020 limited edition by Michael MacGarry. Featuring Maputo, Mozambique 2050 – from 100 Suns series.
Interview with Oyin Akande
February 2020
Q.
The cover depicts Maputo, Mozambique 2050. Can you tell us about why you chose Maputo, the year 2050 and how you have come to render the city in this way?
A.
In 2011 a large natural gas field was discovered by Italian energy giant Eni about 40 kilometres off the Cabo Delgado coast off the coast of Mozambique. Named ‘Mamba South’, the giant offshore natural gas field is one of the largest gas fields in the world, with up to 425 billion cubic metres of natural gas in place.Mozambique's economy currently sits at $14-billion, with government debt at 100% of GDP. For the first time in history Mozambique is facing the real opportunity to write this debt down off the back of the licensing and sales of LNG (“Liquid Natural Gas”). Careful management of this resource via the Mozambique national petroleum company has the potential to boost GDP by between $15-billion and $18-billion per annum and contribute $5-billion annually to the fiscus. In turn, creating 323,000 employment opportunities – with LNG as a whole potentially facilitating real GDP growth of 8% to 10% over the next 30 years.
There are, at present, serious limitations to Mozambique’s infrastructure to meet the needs of projects of this nature. Coming off a low base, on a macro level all major infrastructure in Mozambique will need to be upgraded and with a growing economy a greater number of social infrastructure like universities, schools, hospitals and shopping centres will be required in volume. It is projected that $128-billion cap-ex will need to be spent over the next 10 years.
With this in mind, and continuing the thematic trajectory of the existing works within my fictional 100 Suns series, I focused on Maputo, Mozambique in 2050 with a view to what this real-world development might look and feel like.
Q.
What sparked the 100 Suns series? How long have you been working on it?
A.
Much of my practice is focused on researching narratives and histories of socio-economics, politics and objects within the context of Africa – historically; within the present moment as well as conjecture as to possible futures – principally in spaces on the continent where contemporary life is in a state of invention. I have been working on the series on an ad hoc basis since 2010.
Q.
What do you most hope this cover communicates to the Wallpaper* readership?
A.
I would hope that the cover both actively subverts and counters lazy assumptions as to African expression, agency and aesthetics, by offering a new voice and perspective.
Q.
The key cities this project focuses on are Luanda, Malabo and Lagos. Can you share why the focus on these places?
A.
All of the these cities are dominant socio-economic centres in their respective nation-states: Angola, Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea. They are all net exporters of oil and member states of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (“OPEC”). The 100 Suns series is focused on conjecture as to what these cities might look like as a function of income rents from the upstream petroleum industry, coupled with questions as to whether these forms of urban design and architecture are even viable, and more importantly sustainable.
Q.
Can you help us situate the project more widely in your work? What are your key motivations?
A.
Much of my practice is focused on researching narratives and histories of socio-economics, politics and objects within the context of Africa – historically; within the present moment as well as conjecture as to possible futures – principally in spaces on the continent where contemporary life is in a state of invention.
Q.
How do you view the current structural failures of the very same places your work represents (e.g. failing infrastructure in Lagos, the ghost-town project of Kilamba in Angola) against the projection of your futuristic imaginings?
A.
I would hope that is the inherent tension in these works. That is principally what they are talking to: aside from all producing crude oil, these countries I have focused on all exhibit one or more of the following: histories of deeply problematic colonial abuses, prolonged civil war and institutional corruption. I started making the 100 Suns series as a way of asking what these places might look like if the socio-economic situation were different. But history cannot be rewritten and colonial trauma lasts forever, so these works are not utopias or projections of a future paradise. The 100 Suns series is possibly a form of visual cryptography as my own way of dealing with a world, that on a very basic structural level, literally makes no sense to me.
Q.
Your series considers primarily the historical impact of oil extraction on the countries that have it as a resource. Thinking about the future impact, do you see sustainability as a threat to these projections of growth, as the world pushes against fossil fuel energy?
A.
Absolutely, that said the developing world has pointedly pushed back against the idea of the West’s historical monopoly on oil. In modern history the Western world advanced as a function of economic, and attendant military, domination underwritten by several hundred years of crimes against humanity. Oil played a serious part in that in the previous century – for the West to then state in the 21st that oil is bad and that the developing world must not use it is deeply problematic – the very real issues of sustainability, aside.
Q.
Other than Blade Runner, where else do you get inspiration? How much, if at all, is your work in dialogue with the wider, topical concept of Afro-futurism?
A.
As someone who grew up in the 1980s a film like Blade Runner is an influence, but perhaps not only a visual one. Part of the internal, conceptual logic of the 100 Suns series is actively asking: Are these the future models of urban design and architecture that we want? With the developing world today (especially the massive construction happening in China and India) seemingly mimicking, to varying degrees, the urban development of the previous century (particularly that of the United States) – the answer seems to be: Yes! That is exactly what we want. And I find that so radically weird. If I accept this logic, then I’m living in ersatz development, shop-soiled and dysfunctional given the state of the planet, yet somehow still aspirational?