Crude Milk

is an interdisciplinary project by Vida Kashani and Amir Komelizadeh that explores what it means to live within an oil nation—not only materially, but psychologically, politically and imaginatively.

The project was initially developed during the artists’ residency at Studio 17 in Stavanger, Norway, where it was presented as a multimedia installation combining two-channel video, text, sculpture and sound. It is currently being further developed as a live performance bringing together moving image, live performance, text, sound and sculptural elements in an immersive, interdisciplinary environment.

Beginning with a contradiction shared by many resource-rich societies, Crude Milk examines how the comforts, opportunities and systems of welfare enabled by extraction often coexist with violence, dependency and moral unease.

Drawing on echoes of Norse and Iranian mythologies, the work considers how older ideas of nourishment, guardianship, fire and water have been transformed—and contaminated—through modern petro-capitalism. What was once sacred, protective or life-giving becomes measurable, tradable and contested.

Rather than approaching oil solely as a commodity or an environmental issue, the project considers it as an inheritance: a force that shapes citizenship, collective memory, desire and everyday habits long before it is consciously understood.

At its centre is a divided voice asking how one resists a system from which one also benefits. What does it mean to inherit wealth and unease at once? To belong to a nation whose prosperity rises from buried matter?

As Crude Milk evolves into a live performance, these questions unfold through the interplay of image, sound, language, bodies and sculptural space, inviting audiences to inhabit these contradictions rather than resolve them.