Democratically and collectively defining energy as a process rather than property, will free it from being owned or controlled. All people, at all times are born with a natural right to all energy.  We have yet to define energy from legal or constitutional frameworks so that its very process is a process of ethics.

Energy plays a complex role in our social relations and also perhaps our most direct point  of interaction with nature as well as the future. Decades ago, Buckminster Fuller evoked the concept of a global energy grid, where nations would be collectively responsible for the energy needs of all human beings.  Into the 21^st century, ways in which energy grids can play a significant role in re-organizing society in new and fundamental ways remains largely unexplored.

What if we stop seeing energy from industrial perspectives of work and scarcity and start seeing it as a network capable of connecting people, places and things in intimate ways? Could 21^st century values of network culture such as participation, sharing, non-hierarchy, transparency and a general openness apply to how we use energy in our societies.

We could even begin to see ourselves as participants of energy, rather then consumers of it. Could an ‘alternative grid’ be for the future of energy what Muhammad Yunus’s micro-credit ‘grid’ was to conventional commerce?

|Steven Cowley, Ted Talk |

“The way we will be making energy in the future is not from resource, but really from knowledge.”

Energy is generally defined as the ability to do work. E=mc2 tells us that the energy of anything is intimately tied to time (how far light travels over time). Defining energy further would be to state that energy is the ability to do work over time in space.  Going beyond energy as work (or labour) and material, this research project looks at how energy is an intimate network through which things are connected across time and space.

Joseph Beuys, Unbetitelt, undatiert, Datierungsvorschlag, 1974

| Beuys: Energy Plan – Drawings from Museum Schloss Moyland |

“Joseph Beuys himself described the major experimental area inherent in his early drawings as fundamentally significant for his whole artistic career. Here he developed the thoughts on the “Energy Plan” that were to prepare the way for his ideas on a new “expanded art concept” and “social sculpture”.

| Danielle Knight, 1998 |

“It is a myth that world hunger is due to scarcity of food”