Petro-Ghareebo: NAUSEA

"Petro-Ghareebo: NAUSEA" by Talal Al Najjar (2023)

Overview

Petro-Ghareebo: NAUSEA is a CGI animation set within a virtual world populated with objects of material culture and heritage. Manipulated 3D scans of archaeological sites from the UAE create the landscape in which augmented-reality creatures coexist with pre-Islamic artifacts, spaceships, dune-bashing cars, desert tents made of crustacean limbs, and militarized cyber-dogs. Layers of (mis)-translation and defamiliarization, produce this uncanny reality. An excavation site turned abandoned parking lot, becomes a multilayered poke at practices of commercializing history. Ancient artifacts fusing within decaying cars serve as a morphing contemplation between time and material culture. This world oscillates between the familiar and alien, comfort and nausea, rational and absurd. The vertigo-inducing cinematography features alien, endoscopic, rollercoaster, and drone POV shots. Littered with cross-contamination between scenes, the viewer navigates as though playing a video game.