Sacrificial Energy
<p>I traveled to Amsterdam with a group of students from IZK – Institute for Contemporary Art at Graz University of Technology, my colleague Philipp Sattler and friend, curator, Andrea Popelka, to view the exhibition <em>Charging Myths</em> by the artist collective On-Trade-Off and other configurations of artists and scholars critically investigating the energy transition. In our case, this research relates to an exploratory tunnel, dug 1.6km into the Koralm mountain range in the Austrian Alps, where lithium spodumene was found. European Lithium, a company headquartered in Australia, plans to make this mine (among others in the region) operational by early 2025, extracting the spodumene to send it for processing in Saudi Arabia. This review essay addresses the exhibition <em>Charging Myths</em> and its narrative of lithium extraction in relation to the global energy transition, its histories, social and material relations, and its aesthetic and political potential.</p>
Authors: Rose-Anne Gush
Series Editor: Lucie Kolb, Pablo Müller, Barbara Preisig, Judith Welter
Art Director: Sabo Day
Code: FLX Labs
Part of: Brand-New-Life Magazine
ISBN: 22979220
ISSN: 2297-9220