This conference talk considers Oli Frost’s "Asset Manager Quest" (2024) video game and Zheng Bo’s "Ecosensibility Exercises" (2021) series of installations and performances as projects that build new relations to petrocultures through active participation and playful disruption.

Analysing verbal, written, and visual storytelling, and participants’ agency, I look at these works in tandem to demonstrate that even though they utilise different mediums and varying tones (humorous vs. contemplative), their approaches to engaging participants with environmental thinking complement each other and formulate an effective and meaningful counter to climate anxiety.

Through a comparative analysis, this talk shows how active participation in narrative-based art can strengthen connections to nature and temporarily transform participants’ relationships to other forms of life and to environments, thus empowering participants with tools that deepen environmental awareness and help to make sense of the complexity of petrocultures.