A new article titled “Energy Arts, Power, and Perception: Artistic Interventions in the Context of Climate Change” by c:o/re fellow Hannah Star Rogers has just been published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia for Natural Hazards.
As energy systems are increasingly understood as underlying practical and existential risks, artists are responding with new modes of artwork addressing many energy-related questions and concerns. Energy arts is a field of artistic practice focused on the concepts, materials, and societal impacts of energy systems. Spanning visual art, performance, installation, and design, it explores the physical properties of energy, its political and economic structures, and its environmental consequences. Artists make visible energy’s often-invisible flows, critique dominant systems such as fossil fuel dependency, and propose alternative futures through renewable energy, speculative design, or reuse of obsolete infrastructure. Engagement with energy builds on a broader history of artists responding to natural hazards and technological change, revealing the interdependence of human-made and natural systems. Works range from material-based installations, such as Richard Wilson’s petroleum-filled 20:50, to activist projects like Olafur Eliasson’s solar-powered Little Sun, and wind-powered sculptures such as Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests. Jessica Segall’s Human Energy addresses the embodied and cultural dimensions of energy consumption, while critical explorations of waste are exemplified by the performance and sound work of Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld and Louis-Philippe Scoufaras. Others, like the Land Art Generator Initiative, combine art and engineering to propose renewable energy infrastructures. Energy art overlaps with environmental art and eco-art but is distinct in centering energy systems as cultural and aesthetic concerns. By reframing energy as more than a technical issue, these works foster public engagement, interdisciplinary collaboration, and new ways of imagining energy transitions. Energy art helps expand public understanding and increase questioning around energy’s materiality, infrastructures, and futures in a climate-changed world.
Find the article on the publisher’s website here.