Energy is everywhere, thrumming through bodies and machines, illuminating private and public spaces, enabling the computers and servers I use as I type this. To many, energy seems increasingly and exclusively the province of scientists, businessmen, activists, and public policy makers. Artists beg to differ. Alternate Currents explores:
- how central art is to the conversations we now have about energy, sustainability, and ecology. It considers the way range of arts and media engage with energy: extraction, generation, consumption, crisis, distribution, sustainability, and enervation.
- longstanding links between art, energy, affect, perception, and aesthetics
- the relationship between energy industries and artistic patronage and production
- and how artists engage with energy as it courses through and shapes bodies, cities, and landscapes.
Joseph Campana is a poet, scholar, and arts writer. He teaches at Rice University in Houston, TX. For more information see josephcampana.org.
