Energy Objects: A Media Inquiry of Environmental Futures

Abstract

What will our environmental future look like? What if the future is not ahead of us, but already embedded in the objects we touch? I seek clues in four energy objects—the greenhouse, air purifier, solar cooker, and refrigerator. Historically, each object has taken various forms, emerging at the edges of cities and nations. A greenhouse may be a rural farming structure in Northwest China, built to increase agricultural productivity, but it can also be the phytotron laboratory, used for experiments in indoor climate control. An air purifier may be a domestic gadget designed by companies such as Dyson, or an outdoor “anti-smog” tower in urban Xi’an, or gas chambers used to separate breathable air from the unbreathable. A solar cooker is a simple device that converts sunlight into heat for cooking. It has often been treated as an art installation throughout its timeline because of its metallic sheen—from Rockefeller Foundation-funded projects in the 1950s in the Mexican Highlands, national and local governmental programs in China in the 1970s and 80s, to the philanthropic and commercial work in the present day in Tibetan Plateau. These objects emerged as technological solutions to environmental challenges in the People’s Republic of China (1949-present) and beyond. Here, I conduct a comparative study of mundane objects, architectural spectacles, design manuals, moving and still images, mapping out a history of the power dynamics of energy objects from different regions, traditions, and disciplines. I complement the archival research with ethnographic observations to understand the interplays between these objects and people. These objects, across their varied forms, are designed to control the environment, optimize efficiency, and predict the future. The energy objects I examine encode dreams of progress, anxieties of collapse, and desires to preserve what we cannot hold. Energy Objects addresses these impulses. I ask not only what futures we want, but also what futures have already been built into our environments, and whose sunlight, breath, or soil they consume.