For scoring this and appearing in this, otherwise, I would never have discovered Drawing Restraint 9 (which led me to Cremaster as well).

A few comments -

Whaling is a metaphor for the oil industry. Once upon a time whale blubber was considered precious material and whales were (and still are....) ruthlessly hunted for their blubber and their blubber ruthlessly consumed, and now, petrol (raw oil) has replaced blubber, and it's replaced blubber on an omnipresent unrestrained unlimited scale.

Petroleum, like blubber - it's used for everything, serving the needs of mankind, cosmetics, medicines, lubricants, plastics, shoe polish, clothes, shoes, tires, lino serving the needs of the human body, linoleum, asphalt, construction, paint, grease, detergents, pesticides, feedstock, petrochemicals, fuel, energy, etc.

Petroleum - semen

Nature and animals and people are destroyed and transformed and renewed and consumed.

Petroleum equals water and oil, two substances that chemically do not and cannot mix. Petroleum is a contradictory existence. Humans also struggle with a contradictory existence (logic/reason/morality/faith versus instinct/desire/emotion/animalism).

Oppositional binaries / antipodal themes dominate: the need to use natural resources and the desire to not destroy nature, the need to discover your identity (hunting the whale) and the need to destroy your identity (becoming the whale), rituals obliterated through rituals (rigidly enacted Japanese rituals obliterated during erotic transformation [restraints removed] of Occidental guests into whales; at the same moment, the petroleum melts and falls flat and breaks up); form versus unform, reality versus imagination, art as an object versus art as an idea/thought process, hypertrophy versus atrophy

Restraint, the imposition of restraint onto the body; the pill-shaped petroleum tub with wings is like the human body, the black strip restrains but can be pealed away, and when pealed away, it turns reddish, this same strip was in Barney's Cremaster cycle, the cremaster muscle triggers the reaction of male testicles to stimuli such as sexual intimacy, fear, cold temperature, etc, when the artistic seal is removed the muscle is free to react, the red strip perhaps a vaginal gash for penetration, the red strip the blood and the beating heart, the interiour under the skin, the eroticism

Black bar is the backbone is the restraint, restrain necessity to productivity and form, restraint sustains and develops form

Removal of the bar is the removal of constraint is the unleashing of of erotic energy, senses are blurred, forms are blurred

Yet the eroticism has the potential to overcome binary oppositions as distinct forms are blurred through sensual processes (mating ritual of Occidental guests)

Formlessness is not worthlessness, futility, or meaninglessness: formlessness constitutes the primordial beginning of the world; formlessness is disorder and it represents unlimited potential, very similar to independent thought, both dangerous and powerful because of their unlimited potential and scope

Rituals are like energy, they're circular in nature in they're in heavy circulation. You need energy to do anything and you need some kind of ritual to do anything

Ritual allows literal transformation, ritual enables a complete stripping away of what's on the surface to get to the heart the matter

Humans are in desperate need of a profound understanding of other forms of life/nature, especially of what they're destroying for consumption, and the only way to achieve that profound understanding is via a literal experience of how other forms of life/nature exists; humans will discover there's no difference between them and animals (Occidental guests slicing flensing each other apart: each layer of skin peeled away reveals whale anatomy)

Exploiting nature at full speed for material benefit results in minimizing capacity for enrichment of human intelligence and growth/progress of humankind (the journey to kill a whale turns you into the whale: a return to prehistoric times, yes, but also a negation of the potentials of human intelligence and humankind itself). In other words, minimizing and restraining use of natural resources in order to maximize the full capacity of human intelligence.

How unnatural processes (industrial process relating to petroleum seemed normal, like construction work) seemed perfectly natural and natural processes (Japanese rituals and transformation of humans to whales) seemed unnatural

Anything else>