Petroculture and petromelancholia: The Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee

Culture researchers have recently highlighted the link between the combustion of petroleum products and individual freedom, one of the premises of Western world. This observation has contributed to the emergence of two research areas, petroculture and (more broadly) energy humanities. They study how a given energy regime can influence the forms of culture, the origin and development of species, and the philosophical approach to an individual in the world. One of modern history mechanisms has been identified as petromelancholia, a nostalgia for the times of easy access to cheap crude oil. These ideas offer a starting point for an analysis of the exhibition at the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee. While tapping into individual freedom and technological nostalgia in the narrative layer, the exhibition does not feature petrol as a substance. Instead it is communicated only as a technological and media content: fuel tanks painted in bright colours, a gallery of engines, conventionalised diagrams. The dependence of individual freedom on access to petrol can be seen in Josh Kurpius’s photographs of American motorcycle nomads. It is a shift towards the past inspired by Harley-Davidson’s marketing strategy; however, it also reveals the compensatory role of nostalgia in the face of climate catastrophe