IEC Meeting: "Calling Hours" and "Between ‘Park’ and ‘Energy Transition Zone"

PPEH experiment, Intersecting Energy Cultures Working Group (IEC) will hold its next projects-in-progress session on Friday, November 10, 2023. Teams from Calling Hours, Ohio and Between ‘Park’ and ‘Energy Transition Zone’, Aberdeen will be presenting updates on their work. 

For more about IEC and its ongoing projects visit the IEC Website, https://intersectingenergycultures.org/.

Calling Hours

As part of a large interdisciplinary study at The Ohio State University examining the transition away from coal in Ohio, we are developing a theatre performance, tentatively titled Calling Hours, in Coshocton County, Ohio a community impacted by the closure of surface and subsurface coal mining and more recently the closure of one of the country’s largest coal-fired power plants. Created in collaboration with local artists and individuals with personal histories in the coal industry, Calling Hours is intended to be a theatrical memorial, an opportunity for public grieving, sharing, and reflection.

Tom Dugdale is a theatre director and writer whose work explores adaptation, nontraditional staging, multidisciplinary collaboration, and community engagement. He is an assistant professor at the Ohio State University Dept. of Theatre, Film, and Media Arts. 

Jeffrey Jacquet is an energy sociologist whose work has explored the community impacts from renewable and non renewable energy developments and the transition away from Coal. He is an associate professor at the Ohio State University School of Environment and Natural Resources.

Anne Cornell is the Artistic Director and Community Studio Artist at Pomerene Center for the Arts, a small organization with a mission to promote community involvement in the arts in Coshocton, Ohio.

Between ‘Park’ and ‘Energy Transition Zone’: Experimenting with political possibilities in Aberdeen

Our project starts from the dispute around the proposed Energy Transition Zone [ETZ] in Torry, Aberdeen. The plan cites St Fittick’s park nature reserve and surrounding areas for the ETZ, located between the working-class neighbourhood of Torry and Aberdeen’s semi-industrial southern periphery.

The project will investigate the impact of successive and overlapping energy regimes in and around Torry. The intention is to create an undisciplined, more-than-human contact zone (Isaacs and Ortuba) (2019) where varied understandings of socio-ecological and energy futures can be explored. Our artist-led research programme will comprise artist commissions and public activities; workshops, camps and talks for example.

Rachel Grant is a freelance curator based in Aberdeen and operates through the platform Fertile Ground which uses an interdisciplinary, context specific approach and primarily focuses on new commissions.

William Otchere-Darko is a lecturer in urban planning at Newcastle University. His research focuses on urban and resource geographies, particularly spatial and institutional transformations surrounding energy projects and infrastructures.

Gisa Weszkalnys is an associate professor in anthropology at LSE. Her research examines future making as a political, material, and affective practice, specifically in the context of energy development