One challenge of envisioning and modelling post-fossil futures is the complex and yet not fully interpreted role of fossil energy and materials for modernity. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, almost all global societies, historical processes, technologies, sciences, and cultures have in one way or another relied on petroleum. It seems therefore necessary to understand the epoche of modernity as ‘petromodernity,’ in an epistemic, political, and cultural sense. It is this fossil resource that connects a broad set of (1) geographies (extraction-, refinery-, and consumption-investing countries), (2) sciences (geology, chemistry, etc.), (3) technologies (drilling, engineering, aviation, space travel, etc.), (4). cultural practices (mobility, consumer capitalism, urbanism, etc.), and (5). technologies of the Self and its desires (travel, speed, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, counterculture, etc.) that are paradigmatically modern. In a strong sense, oil was an ‘apriori’ for modern thought, which does not make it any easier to leave it behind. This essay contributes to the agenda of ‘petromodernity’ research—established in literary studies in Northern America—from the material and historiographical perspective of German cultural and media theory. It also makes use of curatorial methods by arguing with pictures from art and science in which these complex connections are present.