Short Abstract

This panel and creative workshop session explores the intersection of materiality and imaginative practice regarding the contested politics of renewable energy futures. We invite critical engagement with ‘green’ extractivism and feminist, decolonial approaches to alternatives.

Description

While promising salvation, renewable energy and low-carbon technologies are linked to uncertainties about shifting relations of power and production as well as expanding frontiers of extraction and land use change that reproduce colonial, racialized, classed and gendered dependencies. Attempts to de-politicize renewable energy by relying on a combination of technical expertise, win-win narratives and moralizing reference to the urgency of climate action has not only failed to transcend conflicts but is apparently a primary driver of their proliferation. In Norway for example, public trust in researchers has overall increased over the past few years while trust in renewable energy researchers has dropped more than any other research field. This reflects growing discontent with state-science-capital entanglements and the legitimatory discourses of technology that STS has a tradition for investigating.

In this combined panel and workshop, we invite proposals to participate by sharing your work and finding generative points of overlap with others which we will use to explore sub-vertizing and culture-jamming as methods for re-politicizing energy futures. Sub-vertizing (or ad-busting) is a creative form of direct action that alters advertising in public spaces with art and grassroots messaging that counters the original messaging. Culture jamming, popularized by The Yes Men, uses humor, performance art and radical honesty to intervene in the narratives of powerful actors, often forcing them to speak when they would rather stay silent.

Examples of relevant themes:

- mining, energy sectors, infrastructure, mobility, geopolitics

- situating ‘critical raw materials’, ‘risk’ and ‘demand’

- epistemic habits, cultural norms and institutional logics regarding energy transitions

- alternative knowledge claims, language, values and/or temporalities.

- creative and speculative energy futures

We will circulate paper drafts/other contributions among participants before the conference and tailor the workshop to convergent areas of interest.

Propose contribution