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- Convenors:
-
Zane Datava
(Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Devyn Remme (University of bergen)
Anna-Sophie Hobi (Norwegian University of Life Sciences)
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- Format:
- Combined Format Open Panel
- Location:
- C-7, 2.09
- Sessions:
- Thursday 10 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Warsaw
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.
Accepted contributions
Session 1 Thursday 10 September, 2026, -Short abstract
This paper analyzes data center scaling through the lens of solarities concept. Comparing Google’s cislunar "Suncatcher" with the low-tech subversive "Solar Protocol," I contrast visions of infinite extra-terrestrial scalability with elemental media practices rooted in planetary constraints.
Long abstract
As the rapid expansion of AI drives surge in energy consumption, the material footprint of data centers has become a concern for Media Studies and STS. Drawing on the "infrastructural turn" and the "elemental" perspective (Starosielski, 2015), paper situates digital communication within a broader environmental context. AI is an extractive industry (Crawford, 2021) and the current trajectory of media infrastructures faces a crisis of "scalability” (Tsing 2012).
This presentation explores responses to this crisis: the search for "non-carbon" energy sources to fuel the ever-growing demand for data. While the industry increasingly looks toward nuclear power (2025 Tech Trends Report), another shift is emerging: the relocation of data infrastructures into cislunar space to utilize solar energy.
Using ComparativeCaseStudy method, I compare two opposite case studies that utilize "the solar" to rethink infrastructural scale:
The "Suncatcher" Concept (Google) - cislunar data center initiative representing a logic of "infinite scalability", where the sun is treated as a boundless resource to sustain planetary-scale computation.
Solar Protocol (Tega Brain et al.) - an artistic, subversite "low-tech" media infrastructure governed by the logic of the sun’s availability.
The analysis is grounded in the theoretical framework of Solarities (After Oil Collective, 2022), viewing the sun not as a resource, but as a socio-political relationship. The study identifies two emerging models of digital consumption: one that practices outer-space expansionism, and another that advocates for practices rooted in planetary constraints. The results highlight how those two imaginaries redefine the relationship between information flow, energy consumption, and the planetary environment.
Short abstract
This paper examines how lithium is made into a speculative resource in Portugal, tracing how geological knowledge, market expectations, state planning, and political frictions sustain extraction as a future possibility amid delay, disputes, and uncertainty.
Long abstract
Since the mid-2010s, Portugal has been represented in official reports, policy documents, and media accounts as a country with significant lithium resources. In these narratives, lithium appears as a critical mineral for the energy transition: a resource that could support electric mobility, reduce European dependence on external suppliers, revitalise rural areas, and enable a national value chain from extraction to recycling. Yet this future has not materialised in a straightforward way. Several projects have been delayed, cancelled, or left in uncertain administrative trajectories, and Portugal still has no battery-grade lithium mines or refineries.
Drawing on interviews, policy documents, media reports, and fieldwork, this paper examines how lithium is being made into a speculative resource in Portugal. It traces how geological knowledge, resource estimates, market expectations, and state planning contributed to the construction of Portugal as lithium-rich and lithium extraction as a possible transition pathway. It then examines how this promise encounters various frictions, including incomplete geological knowledge, local resistance, bureaucratic procedures, and political hesitation.
Building on literature on resource-making, speculation, and the politics of possibility, the paper argues that the apparent slowdown in Portugal’s lithium rush is not merely a suspension of resource-making. Rather, it is part of the contested process through which lithium is made, unmade, slowed down, and kept alive as a future possibility.