Association for the Study of Arts of the Present (ASAP) 17

October 15-17, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Panel title: Energy Activism and Activation

Across the United States, AI-driven data centers are causing the cost of energy to skyrocket faster than ever. Global prices are surging after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as a direct result of US-led aggression in Iran and the Middle East. As global reserves of drinkable water dwindle and national spirits are made to rise and fall with the price of eggs, it becomes clear that if we wish to survive, then we must reconfigure our relationship with energy and the way we allow it to power our lives.

This panel seeks to bring together papers thinking about how contemporary works of art, literature, and film/media respond to the question of how we can reimagine our relationship with energy? While renewable energies like solar, hydro and even tidal power are often presented as the way forward from our “energy crisis,” what if we pursued the answer to the more radical question: How can we re-design human social infrastructures to reduce the energy we consume as individuals, institutions, and communities altogether?  What would such a society look like? How have we, in the present day and in our histories, been able to resist the imposition of energy regimes – closely entwined with capitalistic frameworks of power and productivity? From Cara Daggett’s notion of petro-masculinity to Jessica Hurley’s conceptualization of the nuclear mundane, what has become clear is that the question of the human relationship with energy has forever colored the way we think, communicate, and behave.

Energy is broadly construed in this panel, thinking not only about conventional modes of energy like fossil fuels, geothermal, nuclear, etc. but also human labor power, nutritional energy produced within biological organisms, or even fantastical conceptualizations of energy! Please submit your short abstracts of 250 words along with a short bio by Monday, April 20, 2026, to raina.bhagat@hunter.cuny.edu or directly to the panel through the ASAP portal at https://asap17.exordo.com/panels/66/contribute/e235d8fa6f1ffa3580ff0af1f...

Potential papers can consider:

• Utopian imaginations or depictions of post-energy societies
• Indigenous frameworks and proposals of alternate energy relations between humans and the environment
• Anti-nuclear or anti-fossil fuel activism, poetry and art from across the world
• (De)coloniality and energy
• Cultural impacts of protests against key energy infrastructure, like the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, the Chipko Movement, etc.
• Discourses surrounding “renewable” and “clean” energy
• Works of petrofiction and/or climate fiction
• Science, speculative and fantastical fictions dealing with energy and consumption
• Material (and cultural) byproducts of energy production and consumption: pollution and contamination, radiation, waste
• Conflations of energy with oppressions and/or privileges associated with gender, race, caste, and ethnicity