The Arts of Energy: Between Hoping for the Stars and Despairing in the Detritus

Abstract

Fossil fueled energy production and consumption are the basis of global industrialised societies, with the deleterious biophysical effects of such production and consumption also forming the basis of the advent of Anthropocene. In the context of science and environmental policy, hope denotes rapid decarbonisation across the globe. Meanwhile, in art and the humanities, the study of such energy and decarbonisation remains nascent and nebulous. To account for these discrepancies, this article outlines the scale of the biophysical challenges by first establishing the relationship between outspoken climate scientists and international organisations determining climate and energy policy. This relationship-between marginalised and mainstream-is used to frame the analogous challenges for two cultural fields that have recently emerged in direct response: energy humanities and the arts of energy. The discussion centers on the challenge common to all fields-between the outspoken marginal and the orthodox mainstream-to speculate on how the arts of energy may recalibrate a context-contingent hope for energy futures, drawing on case studies of ISEA Bright Future and Facing Futures Free From Fear, two installations simultaneously staged by the author in 2013 about the relationship between energy and climate change. Keywords: energy; energy humanities; renewable energy; fossil fuels; climate change; Anthropocene; art; climatology; space exploration Emperors, Elephants, and EnergyIt is 6 November 2012 at the University of Bristol. The Cabot Institute, the University's cross-disciplinary research institute for 21st century environmental challenges, is holding its annual lecture as part of the University's Festival of Social Sciences and Law. The auditorium is filled to capacity, there to hear from Professor Kevin Anderson, one of the world's leading climate scientists. A chartered engineer initially trained in mechanical engineering, Anderson has since strayed outside of engineering, having been Director of the UK's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, one of the foremost climate change research institutes in the world, of which he is presently Deputy Director. He has also purposefully strayed outside of climate science and into the relationship between climate change and the politics and policy of energy, as Professor of Energy and Climate Change in the School of Mechanical, Aeronautical and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester. His straying outside of domains and disciplines extends beyond the normative role played by scientists and academics and into the activism of working in and against UK government commissions around climate and energy policy. This level of eclecticism appears to have fuelled the capacity interest in his lecture.