What role do so-called ‘soft values’ play in racial capitalism, and how do they shape our vision of a just, green energy transition? In the video work ‘Fire Nation’ (2021), Ina Hagen engages with the rebranding of Norway’s largest oil and gas company, the majority state owned ‘Statoil’ to ‘Equinor,’ through which the company sought to relaunch as a broad energy company with a future oriented, socially and ecologically conscious image.

Through slow, often hypnotic, fragmentary images, ‘Fire Nation’ takes a single promotional video from the 250 million kroner rebranding campaign, and deconstructs it through conversations about climate optics, colonial exploitation, power and powerlessness.

Hagen takes Equinor’s activities in Brazil as a case to question the paradoxical condition of Norway's self-image, which relies heavily on stated ideals of fairness and environmental stewardship, while operating—through companies like Equinor and Norsk Hydro—as one of the largest energy miners in Brazil today, including in vulnerable areas in the Amazon.

In 2025, Equinor’s energy production is still almost exclusively fossil based, and the company has announced a cut-back on planned investments in renewables and an increase its oil and gas production by 2027.

Told in the voices of: Activist Emma Eide Rydningen, social anthropologist Ståle Knudsen, former head of the Norwegian Maritime Museum, Espen Wæhle, senior researchers at the Western Norway Research Institute, Ragnhild Freng Dale and Petro Stempniewski..

‘Fire Nation’ was commissioned by Bergen Kunsthall for the exhibition ‘The Ocean.’
Special thanks to Christian Holm-Glad