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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
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 1Short 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
As power struggles unfold over access to ‘critical minerals’, I challenge expert and policy maker claims that energy transitions can be made ‘more equitable and just with more traceability and transparency about supply chains’.
Long abstract
Dust is the unruly consequence of extraction that reminds us how leaky both ‘nature’ and the taxonomic systems that support extractivism are. While the obedient matter of ore sits in orderly piles until human agents transport and transform it, dust defies capture and control. Dust hitches rides on the open trucks driving from mine to market but gets distracted and goes off to visit the soil, water and lungs on the way. It transgresses the boundaries between ground and air, inside and outside, resource and threat. The indiscretion of dust reminds us that our bodies and territories aren’t as separate and self-contained as they seem.
I present multi-sited research that links the practices of due diligence professionals in Europe with insights from field work on manganese mining in Zambia. By attending to (1) dispossession, (2) ecological degradation, and (3) commodity export dependence, I demonstrate that transparency is an arena for power struggles at multiple scales, characterized by socially constructed ignorance and a contingent web of pressures that stabilizes extractive relations while rendering them invisible. I argue that transparency configured through an extractive gaze produces de-humanized risk-subjects, proliferates toxic body-territories and generates a growing class of landless people who are surplus to capitalist labor requirements in the age of automation. Herein lies the potential for rupture.
Short abstract
This paper examines the relationship between risk and criticality in the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act. It analyses how these concepts are constructed, by whom, and the socio-material processes shaping them, as well as their political deployment and effects on territories targeted for mining.
Long abstract
The emerging literature on criticality highlights its dynamic and fluid nature, shaped by factors such as geopolitics, expert practices, technological developments, price fluctuations, and regulatory frameworks. In the context of raw materials policy, criticality is closely tied to notions of risk and security. For example, the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) of 2024 defines criticality based on two parameters: the economic importance of materials and the risks associated with their supply. This paper examines the construction of risks as a socio-material process shaped by values, expert practices, technological devices, and institutional frameworks embedded in power relations.
Drawing on 10 months of fieldwork in Portugal and Brussels, including participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, this paper explores the relationship between risk and criticality in the CRMA. It examines how risks are defined, by whom, and their connection to criticality. Furthermore, it analyses how criticality and risk are shaped by various interests and agendas, as well as how they are politically deployed and the concrete effects they produce on territories targeted for mining development under the CRMA. It contributes to an understanding of how these concepts are produced, justify action, and shape governance, often exacerbating inequalities and territorial conflicts.
Short abstract
This paper examines how promises of domestic lithium extraction on European soil are constructed and contested through EIAs. While EIAs render landscapes into ‘sacrifice zones’, activists, artists, and communities develop ‘counter-documents’ that challenge extractive narratives of inevitability.
Long abstract
Since its discovery in 1817, lithium has given rise to different imaginaries of the future. Today it is promoted as a critical raw material for the ‘green’ and digital transition, with the EU actively investing in the ‘onshoring’ of lithium mining on European soil. This contribution examines how these promises are articulated and contested through the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) surrounding the proposed lithium extraction in Cínovec, a village on the Czech–German border that sits on what is presumably Europe’s largest hard-rock lithium deposit.
Focusing on the EIA as a contested media and bureaucratic document, the paper analyses how promises of regional development and global sustainability are constructed through maps, zoning plans, and visual models embedded in these reports. Originally designed as tools for democratic participation and environmental protection, EIAs can also function as instruments through which landscapes are rendered as already ‘damaged’ and therefore ready to be sacrificed. At the same time, the EIAs serve as legal and discursive tools through which residents and environmental organizations can challenge extractive narratives and proposed visions for regional development.
Drawing on document analysis, collaborative fieldwork and artistic research, the contribution highlights examples of ‘counter-documents’ produced by activists, artists, and local communities in response to the EIAs. From alternative infographics and counter-mapping to collective landscape walks, these interventions operate as forms of culture jamming that challenge the communicative authority of EIAs, disrupting narratives of inevitability and opening up space for alternative future-making.