Speculative Energy Futures (SEF) uses arts-based practices to imagine alternative futures. We bring together scholarly inquiry and creative processes to explore diverse perspectives on the topic of energy transition, so we can re-imagine energy futures beyond what we currently understand to be possible.
SEF is a collaborative, multi-year research-creation project, started in 2017, that brings together artists, activists, scientists, engineers, policy makers, and social science and energy humanities researchers to investigate the challenges and potentials of energy transition through artistic means.
Participants in SEF research key issues, and develop arts-based outputs for a series of high-profile exhibitions that explore a range of pathways toward variable energy futures. All of these research-creation outputs are informed by the interdisciplinary expertise of the team—that includes policy experts, engineers, social and cultural theorists, economists, and artists—who together explore current research and imagine alternate futures as they relate to feminist and decolonial energy transition.
The team acknowledges our nation’s history of genocidal practices and asserts that conflict over energy and natural resources have played, and continue to play, a starring role in this history. SEF’s various projects are intended to help participants think through ecological, climate, and energy justice, and the SEF team understands that there is no social or ecological justice without decolonization and Indigenization. Its many different iterations (or beta tests) use art and design to reimagine relationships to energy, and redefine actions for the climate crisis, specific to participants’ and their locals. The project’s many outputs, including exhibitions, the FluxKit For Energy Transition, publications, and podcasts, invites participants to identify the synergies and solidarities that we can collectively nurture in order to more capaciously face the daunting challenges of climate change and just energy transition.
To learn more about the various research-creation projects , click on the bubbles below!
Prototypes for Possible Worlds
This exhibition marked the first public showing of the research-creation outputs created by the Speculative Energy Futures team.
Unpacking Energy Transition (FluxKit Beta Tests)
This exhibition was the second iteration of the Speculative Energy Futures FluxKit project, and included the research-creation artworks first exhibited at FAB Gallery installed in a pop-up-style exhibition at SQUARE, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
FluxKit for Energy Transition
Based on five years of interdisciplinary collaboration, the FluxKit for Energy Transition is a toolbox to help citizens, policy makers, community organizers, engineers and scientists, teachers, and students think about energy transition as not simply a technological issue, but a social and cultural shift.
Researchers/Artists/Co-Applicants
Project Affiliates
Explore more Just Powers projects
Discover the other projects that Just Powers is conducting to document, investigate, analyze energy transition.