Technological solutions are a myth. For decades, industry has optimistically reported on soon-to-arrive technological solutions to the climate crisis. They never came and were replaced by new promises.
Creative Power is an art project utilising self-taught ways of literally converting advertisements for fossil fuels (e.g. cars & flights) into electricity. This is used to power a sign that reads TECHNOLOGY IS IRRELEVANT.
Various experiments are carried out with basic knowledge gained from online tutorials, such as turning the paper into ethanol, or building a rocket stove to burn the paper to power a steam engine. I sourced industrial enzymes to break down the cellulose in the paper into glucose, although the process has, to date, not been successful.
Tactics of invention and novelty are employed in the project, which are always a crowd pleaser. However, this type of invention is not what is missing for the energy transition to succeed - we’ve had the necessary technologies for long enough, and haven’t developed them. Electric busses, for example, were running in Berlin over 100 years ago, but recently, the transport minister of the city of Berlin had to go all the way to China to purchase electric buses for the city – because German car companies hadn’t started producing them.
I asked a friend what he thought of the title, ‘Creative Power’, and he summed it up well: ‘it sounds like it’s saying a lot, but actually says nothing.’ It alludes to the overuse of the term ‘creative’ in marketing language, while the word power more directly touches on it’s two quite distinct meanings – power in the sense of electricity, but also in the sense of political power.
Creative Power was hosted by Zönotéka in Berlin, and supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds.
