Paper short abstract:

In this presentation I analyze a big art and energy project – the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) – and discuss how art and aesthetics may offer not only other means for engaging in the making of energy futures, but also other means for STS researchers to intervene in the field.

Paper long abstract:

In Denmark, and many other places, policy-makers, utility companies, infrastructure developers, and social scientist struggle to make 'the public' more engaged in energy infrastructures. A discipline seldom considered when tinkering with infrastructure development is the arts. In this presentation I ask, what it take for arts and aesthetics to intervene into the making of alternative energy futures.

Analyzing a big art and energy project - the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) - I discuss how art and aesthetic may offer not only other means for engaging energy publics, but also other means for STS researchers to intervene in energy politics, infrastructure innovation, and in complex practices of future-making.

As part of my PhD research I worked as a project manager for LAGI as the project took place in Copenhagen in 2014. Doing an auto-ethnographic analysis of my own work of establishing local support and partnerships, securing funding, and communicating the project, I will discuss how the practice of 'project management work' can function as a method for studying and intervening in the field. Proposing and negotiating artistic practices as means for infrastructure development and engagement of energy publics reveal important insights into the complex political and epistemic work of imagining and making different energy futures.