From the 10-17 June 'Oil Dorado' (2020) by Ashanti Harris will be available to watch.

Access:

Link: https://vimeo.com/717336961?share=copy

Password:  CRUDE2024

In 2019, Georgetown, the capital of Guyana was twinned with Aberdeen. An already mineral rich country, in 2015, Guyana discovered an unprecedented amount of oil that could lead to its transition from one of the “poorest” countries in the world to one of the “richest” on a per capita basis. This was the catalyst for Ashanti Harris whose recent work explored the connections between Scotland and Guyana since the 1790's when Scot’s were amongst the most prominent slave traders and plantation owners in the country. Working with the idea of a contiguous archive, 'Oil Dorado' focuses on Guyana’s long history with extraction. From the violence of colonialism to the industrial mining of minerals extracted from the land, including gold, to oil production offshore. This multi-layered approach examines a kind of politics of extraction through time, where histories of extraction whether people, resources or minerals cannot be disentangled from one another and the future shaping of Guyana by oil is yet to fully unfold.

'Oil Dorado' was originally made as film and sculptural installation presented as part of CRUDE - an exhibition that explores complex relationships with crude oil and the sticky interplays of politics, culture and ecology. Curated and produced by Fertile Ground, Aberdeen.

'Oil Dorado' (2020). Image curtesy Ashanti Harris.

Rachel is a freelance curator based in Aberdeen and works under the platform ‘Fertile Ground’. Fertile Ground focuses on interdisciplinary projects, place-based approaches and (post-)extractive practice. Her research focus includes ‘petroculture’ (the social relations produced by our use of and dependency on oil), particularly its impact on Aberdeen’s political ecology, the unfolding energy transition and contested narratives of Just Transition.

Recent projects include interdisciplinary research project ‘Living with Energy Transition’ (2023-24) co-organised with artist Maja Zećo, Anthropologist Gisa Weszkalnys and Urbanist William Otchere-Darko, ‘Oil Tour’ a participatory walking tour (2023-), ‘Just Transition Residential’ (2022) co-organised with Friends of the Earth Scotland and Grass Roots to Global.

Resource: Herrett S & Smith S 'Torry People's Assembly: Documenting the Torry People's Assembly 2021 held on the 25th September 2021 at St Fittick's Park'. Available at https://www.grassroots2global.org/thinkinghome/torry-assembly

Question: How might post-extractive thinking and practice impact interdisciplinary research spaces?

Alejandra Rodríguez-Remedi was awarded a teaching licentiate and a Masters of Education by the University of Concepción in her native Chile. She was active in the reform of the country's vocational education system, co-designing a number of innovative participatory projects in teacher retraining, curricular construction, and educational management. Having relocated to the UK, she went on to complete a funded doctoral project entitled 'The arts as means of cultural integration: A Chilean case study' at Gray's School of Art in 2007.

In 2022, having taught at the University of Aberdeen for several years, Alejandra was appointed as a Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture. Her research currently focuses both on the poetics of filmmaker Raúl Ruiz and on arts-based approaches to petroculture. She recently designed and taught an undergraduate Honours course entitled Art and Oil: Crude in Film and Visual Culture. She also helped formulate and contributes as a researcher on the Austrian project, Reflecting Oil (2019-).

Resources:

'Oil' A Symphony in Motion (M.G. MacPherson, 1933, USA)

https://youtu.be/LF0kIF8JujU?t=24

Movietone News newsreel (1975) https://youtu.be/W7_tYCmCmk4

Question: How do the arts and humanities visualise the social and cultural implications of oil and energy on individuals, communities and societies and thus help to ignite creative thinking about sustainable energy futures?

-50-100-word bio

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-A question you are bringing to the workshop

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We have asked participants, presenters, moderators and organisers to contribute to the Padlet in advance of the workshop taking place. We hope this can be a space for individuals to connect beyond the workshop. The content will be kept up for 3 weeks post workshop, and can be downloaded as a PDF (use the side bar).

If you have any problems downloading the content, please contact the organisers for support.

Day 1 – Monday 10th June 2024

Agenda

09.30 – 10.15: Coffee and registration.

10.15 – 10.30: Welcome and introduction by Dr Alejandra Rodríguez-Remedi, University of Aberdeen.

10.30 – 10.40: Interdisciplinary Challenges (Prof. Ele Belfiore, director of the University of Aberdeen’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Social Inclusion and Cultural Diversity, and Prof. David Burslem, director of the University’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Environment and Biodiversity).

10.40 – 11.50: CRUDE (Aberdeen, 2021) (Rachel Grant, Dr Shane Strachan, Alison Scott, and Ashanti Harris).

11.50 – 12.20: Memorialisation and documentation (Kate Downie).

12.30 – 13.00: Discussion (facilitated by Dr Alejandra Rodríguez-Remedi).

13.00 – 14.00: Networking lunch. Coffee available for afternoon.

14.00 – 14.20: Interdisciplinary reflection on key issues raised before lunch (Dr Alejandra Rodríguez-Remedi, Dr Kate Gormley, and Dr Rebecca Macklin).

14.20 – 14.45: Invisible Oil (Aberdeen, 2007) (Ernst Logar).

15.00 – 16.30: Oil experiments in one of the Science Teaching Hub's labs (Ernst Logar).

16.30 – 17.00: Discussion (facilitated by Dr Alejandra Rodríguez-Remedi).

Day 2 – Tuesday 11th June 2024

Venue: ground floor meeting room, Science Teaching Hub, University of Aberdeen

Group creative moderators: Kate Downie, Dylan Dutot Mayne, Callum Kellie, Dr Shane Strachan, Sara Stroud, and Dr Maja Zećo.

Venue: ground floor meeting room, Science Teaching Hub, University of Aberdeen

09.30 – 10.00: Coffee.

10.00 – 10.10: Welcome and introduction by Dr Alejandra Rodríguez-Remedi, University of Aberdeen.

10.10 – 10.20: What is culture/SHIFT? (Dr Lewis Coenen-Rowe, culture/SHIFT manager).

10.20 – 11.45: Groups reflect about Day 1; discuss expectations; brainstorm possible ideas/themes/activities capable of bringing the sciences and the arts and humanities closer together which can potentially be pursued collaboratively in the future.

11.45 – 12.45: Groups report back.

12.45 – 13.10: Final reflections (by Dr Alejandra Rodríguez-Remedi, Dr Lewis Coenen-Rowe, and curator Rachel Grant of Fertile Ground).

13.10 – 14.00: Networking Lunch. Farewell.

The workshop welcomes researchers from all disciplines interested in bringing the sciences and the arts and humanities closer together for a more holistic understanding of the energy crisis. It will be a unique opportunity for researchers across Schools to come together and engage with the local arts community and other external stakeholders in imaginative discussions about Aberdeen, Europe’s ‘energy capital’ (until recently better known as its ‘oil capital’).

Through a series of presentations and activities, a select group of artists with experience of researching Aberdeen’s entanglements with oil and gas will be offering insights into the creative methodologies at the heart of their critical enquiry and illuminating fresh reflections about energy transition. Following these artists’ provocations, there will bespace for informal discussions, brainstorming ideas, and networking.

The Padlet will be used as a way of introducing the group to each other, their backgrounds and research interests. The content will be available post-workshop for participants to download as a PDF.

Dr Shane Strachan is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen. He was the National Library of Scotland’s 2022–2023 Scots Scriever which led to him winning Scots Champion at the 2023 Scots Language Awards. His first poetry collection, DWAMS, was published by Tapsalteerie in April 2024 and includes his long poem ‘Dreepin’, focused on Aberdeen’s relationship with oil and gas, which was originally developed as part of Fertile Ground’s CRUDE exhibition in 2021. Previous works include The Bill Gibb Line (Look Again; Aberdeen Art Gallery) and ‘The Shelter’ (National Theatre of Scotland).

Resource: 'Dreepin' (2021) excerpt

https://youtu.be/xfJ-BT962NE

Questions: How would you describe your relationship with oil? What metaphor would you use to explain this to someone else?

Born in 1965 in Klagenfurt (Austria), Ernst Logar has been working with photography, film, sculpture, and installations since 1995. In his artistic work, he addresses existing power structures and historical, sociocultural, and ecological phenomena. He works as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

His creative work includes Non-Public Spaces (since 1998), Den Blick hinrichten (Focussing the Gaze [on executions by rifle squad]) (2004–2008), The End of Remembering – Carinthian Partisans (2008–2012), Invisible Oil (2008), Sustainable Transformation (2010), Place of Unrest (2012–2018), Tar Sands: Approaching an Anthropocentric Site (2016), and Reflecting Oil: Arts-based Research on Oil Transitionings (since 2019).

Resources:

www.reflectingoil.info

www.logar.co.at

Question: How can creative and artistic practices contribute to a holistic energy transition?

Alison Scott is an artist, writer and art-worker often working with other artists on projects. Her work is research-led, driven by film, performance and writing practices, and forefronts speculative approaches to knowledge production. Recent projects—drawing on encounters with weather, oil and land—engage with aspects of environmental politics on an everyday, situated level. 

Alison is a practice-based PhD student at Gray’s School of Art, focussing on art, forestry and the commons. She is currently working on a Creative Scotland funded R&D project with regular collaborator Rachel McBrinn, in partnership with St Andrews Botanic Garden, towards an exhibition at Travelling Gallery in 2025. Recently she has worked with organisations like SCAN, Cove Park, Collective, and Hospitalfield.

Resource: Alison Scott. 'The Visitor: Report C’. 2021

here which could be the simplest thing to share. I've also recently been trying to find more about this project by Katie Ritson 'Intimate Energies in Domestic Spaces', Kate Ritson “Fuelling Fairytales? The Quest for an Offshore Happy End”. here. 

Question: How do oil and extraction impact, or seep into, cultural work (even when it is not an explicit focus of a project, for instance) and how can we acknowledge, make visible and critique the ways that it interacts with other subjects?

Kate Downie is an artist whose focus is on drawing and movement. Her practice is primarily exhibition-based and strongly linked to people and place. To this end much of her work has been created though residences in diverse public areas such as an oil rig, a 20^th century suspension bridge, a maternity hospital in Glasgow and a Norwegian fishing village. She is currently collaborating with Glasgow Women’s Library towards an exhibition later this year, based on the completion of a painting by Joan Eardley, left unfinished in her Glasgow studio at the time of her death. She is also working with Glasgow dance artist Stephanie Black-Daniels as a specialist draftswoman to create a process-based collaborative work ‘Tracers’, focusing on 20^th century women labourers within the Glasgow Shipbuilding industry, performed at Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art in 2024.

Since graduating from Gray’s School of Art in 1980 she has engaged in many artforms, working in murals, painting, performance, moving image, installation, printmaking, photography and writing, all underpinned by drawing. Last year she was recipient of The Fosskleiva Kultursenter International Residency researching ink drawing in and onto land ice. In 2022 Glasgow Museums (Glasgow Life) purchased her Downie/Eardley completion painting Four Children 1962-2022, supported by the Eardley Foundation.

As a mid-career artist, she established Birchtree Studios in Fife in 2019, which has since become a hub for creative collaborations both locally and internationally. She is currently one half of ArtMovesFife, an organisation funded by Creative Scotland, which places local artists and communities at the centre of environmental change through slow collective journeys through Fife.

Her work is held in public and private collections both in the UK and worldwide.

www.katedownie.com

Resource: www.ArtMovesFife.org 

Question: The energy crisis and the corresponding climate crisis can be the cause of human grief, which unto itself is debilitating. I believe think that constantly looking for expressions of abstract ‘hope’ is equally non-productive without action to change attitudes and encourage new thinking. What actions can we make to change those attitudes on the ground, amongst people?

Ashanti Harris is a multi-disciplinary artist, researcher and lecturer exploring ways of disrupting historical narratives and re-imagining them from a Caribbean diasporic perspective. Recent commissions and exhibitions include: Walking With The Ancestors in Joy and Healing, Performance Now Commission for Take Me Somewhere Festival, Glasgow (2023); Crafted Selves: The Unfinished Conversation, St Andrews Museum, (2023); You Are a Memory I am Your Shadow, The Reid Gallery, Glasgow (2023); A Carnival Of Overlapping Histories, Platform, Glasgow (2023); Black Gold, commission for Fringe of Colour film festival, Edinburgh, (2023); Jerwood Staging Series 2022, Jerwood Arts, London (2022); Dancing a Peripheral Quadrille, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Edinburgh (2022)

Image credit: Robert McFadzean

https://www.ashantiharris.com

Fransiska Louwagie is a Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Aberdeen. She took up this position in August 2022 and was previously employed at the KULeuven, where she completed her PhD, and at the University of Leicester, where she held a post as Lecturer and then Associate Professor of French. She is the author of Témoignage et littérature d’après Auschwitz (2020) and has co-edited several volumes and thematic issues, including: Un ciel de sang et de cendres. Piotr Rawicz et la solitude du témoin (2013); Key Cultural Texts in Translation (2018), Ego-histories of France and the Second World War: Writing Vichy (2018); Tradition and Innovation in Franco-Belgian bande dessinée (202); Migration, Memory and the Visual Arts: Second-Generation (Jewish) Artists (2023). She was the PI for the AHRC-research project ‘Covid in Cartoons’, conducted in collaboration with Shout Out UK and Cartooning for Peace (2021-2022). Alongside this project, she conducted a number of GCRF-funded projects around political cartooning, in collaboration with partners in Kenya, Ivory Coast and South Africa (2021-2022). She is currently leading a BA/Leverhulme research project on ‘The Future of WWII France in Academia’ with Manu Bragança (2022-2024), and is a Co-I on the SSHRC-funded project ‘Visual Storytelling and Graphic Art in Genocide and Human Rights Education’ (2022-2029).

Resource: https://www.cartooningforpeace.org/en/editos/war-in-ukraine-and-energy-crisis/

Question: My question would be about the role of political cartooning in portraying the energy crisis, and a different question on engagement with young people through the arts.

My name is Andrew MacGregor and I am University Archivist here at Museums & Special Collections at the University of Aberdeen. We care for the University's archives, rare books and museum collections and whilst the core of that reflects the five centuries of the University, there is a growing collection relating to the energy sector. I am also lead for the Capturing the Energy (CTE) project which aims to collect the archives relating to the oil, gas and renewables sector.

Resource: Graphic ‘Who Owns Aberdeen’ from the publication Oil Over Troubled Waters (Aberdeen People’s Press, 1976)  - Who owns Aberdeen / The great North East money game | People’s Graphic Design Archive (peoplesgdarchive.org)

Question: Should the arts and heritage sector stop accepting funding from oil and gas companies?

Nick Adams is a Chartered Psychologist and Research Fellow. His academic interests are interdisciplinary and draw from applied psychology, sociology and poststructural feminist theory, predominantly studying men and masculinities; men’s mental health, safe and risk behaviours. His research focusses on pathways towards positive human growth and understanding development of socially inclusive and beneficial forms of masculinities. Much of his past and current research explores men working in high-risk industry, primarily to understand cultures of masculinities that can emerge, and both be legitimised and challenged in near-all-male spaces, much of these workspaces traditionally typed as hypermasculine sites of labour.

Resource: Adams, N. N. (2023). Four Distinct Cultures of Oilfield Masculinity, but Absent Hegemonic Masculinity: Some Multiple Masculinities Perspectives from a Remote UK Offshore Drilling Platform. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 52(3), 344-378. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416221116658

Question: How can art-linked methods and interventions be utilised to promote open discussions with men about masculinities, mental health, identity and growth in workspaces which may have a history of constraining such topics of discussion via ingrained institutional stoicism?

I’m a historian by training - with an initial false start in a Natural Sciences degree, when I attended ecology and botany lectures!

As a postgraduate researching early modern Quakerism, I worked in NCAD Dublin in the Library where I found the Art degree environment inspiring.

I've turned towards 18th/19th Century history recently, having joined a Post-Enlightenment 19th Century Scotland research group at the University of Aberdeen. Aside from an Environment Humanities interest, I work in University Press publishing at the Sir Duncan Rice Library and am part of the Green Library Group. 

Resource: Sir Jonathan Bate - How the Humanities Can Save the Planet: Living Sustainably (youtube.com)

Sir Jonathan Bate - How the Humanities Can Save the Planet: Living Sustainably, Department of English, Arizona State University, Feb. 20, 2019.

[Skip Introductions - 9:41. Lecture duration: 1 hour 10 minutes after introductions]

Question: How can we encourage Environmental Humanities in Aberdeen in all its forms/disciplines to help us tackle climate change?

Callum Kellie is an artist and educator based in Aberdeen, Scotland. Working at the Robert Gordon University, he primarily teaches media production and film making skills across both journalism and media courses.

His experiences of working within the North Sea oil industry have heavily influenced his arts practice. Previous works have explored the social impact of the industry on its workforce and surrounding communities, with recent projects expanding on these themes to include industrial transition. He has also worked as a creative producer, facilitating collaborative creative projects between RGU and external industry partners within the oil and gas space.

https://callumkellie.wordpress.com/

Resource: Keystone – Documentary film. (2023).

https://youtu.be/fUHwTSrt9zs

Question: Will there be an impact on community identity due to energy transition?

David Burslem is Interdisciplinary Director for Environment and Biodiversity and Professor of Forest Ecology and Diversity at the University of Aberdeen. His background is in ecology and conservation science, and his current research takes interdisciplinary approaches to addressing the linked crises of biodiversity loss and global climate change. This includes studies addressing the mechanisms that maintain tree species richness in forests, and applications of this knowledge to practical problems of forest conservation and ecosystem management, generally in collaboration with external stakeholders in government agencies, non-governmental organisations and statutory bodies. David is also Keeper of the Cruickshank Botanic Garden and Arboretum.

Resource: Artist Fiona Swapp, and in particular her images and research on Sphagnum moss (Fiona Swapp Blog - FIONA SWAPP (weebly.com)), which provides the raw material for peat formation (the latest store of terrestrial carbon on the planet).

Question: In the context of the energy transition, how do we resolve the demand to expand the infrastructure of renewable energy generation (wind turbines, pylons etc) in the natural environment, whilst maintaining the visual appeal of wild landscapes?

Lewis joined Creative Carbon Scotland in July 2019. His background is in classical music, working as a composer of chamber music and opera as well as teaching music in universities. Prior to joining Creative Carbon Scotland, he worked as a teaching assistant at Glasgow University after completing a PhD in music composition at King’s College London. He also has a background in environmental campaigning with voluntary groups in London and Glasgow.

His role at Creative Carbon Scotland involves running culture/SHIFT projects including Climate Beacons, carrying out research, advising and supporting artistic and sustainability practitioners and developing collaborative projects between the arts and environmental sectors. He also leads on our work on climate justice and culture.

Resource: This video we hade made summarises why culture matters for work on climate change: https://vimeo.com/643933667, more of a report, like the report on the Climate Beacons project: https://www.creativecarbonscotland.com/resource/climate-beacons-evaluation-report/, a practical guide like the culture/SHIFT Methodology (which leads through the practical steps of how we run embedded artist projects): https://www.creativecarbonscotland.com/resource/culture-shift-methodology/.

Questions: How do we get people in decision-making roles around climate in the North East to understand the value of and support work with the arts and artists? Does this mean trying to 'speak their language' more, thinking about approaches to evaluation, addressing misconceptions...

Navigating the collapse of late-stage capitalism with Friends of the Earth Scotland, Friends of St Fittick’s Park and other grassroot collectives. For past 10 years I’ve been working with a variety of artists to try and make sense of the world in the context of power, land, and oil. Previously worked in social environmental research (5 years), rug scrubbing (5 months) and construction industry (14 years) building a variety of fossil fuel installations. Home is Torry, originally from Grimsby.

Resource: Calam Devode 'PETROLOVE (work in progress)' https://vimeo.com/671709123?share=copy

Question: How and when are we going to reclaim our power in Aberdeen so everyone can make art for no other purpose than to make art?

Interdisciplinary research fellow, University of Aberdeen

Kate is an interdisciplinary researcher specialising in coastal and marine environmental management. Her extensive work encompasses a wide range of areas including offshore renewables, oil and gas, decommissioning, marine and coastal conservation, marine spatial planning, marine and coastal visualisation and participatory planning with stakeholders.

Kate has worked with the marine energy industry, with a focus on environmental impacts through various industry roles, industry working groups, placements and academic positions, and is highly skilled in industry/academic knowledge exchange and understanding research impact.

Kate’s current research focusses on the development of tools for marine energy decision making (e.g., vessel analysis for decommissioning); and visualisation tools for stakeholder engagement (e.g., marine growth visualisation).

Resource: Either the pictures below of Marine Growth on North Sea platforms, or the link to my industry mapped data Oil and Gas Environment Interactive (arcgis.com)

Question: How can we use creative approaches to record and communicate public perceptions of energy transition decisions (e.g. leaving decommissioned structures in place)?

Hi everyone. I’m Lucy, and I’m an Information Assistant based in the Sir Duncan Rice Library. I’m also a member of the Green Libraries Task and Finish Group, and have been working on ideas and recommendations around sustainability since January.

I’m particularly excited about the interdisciplinary nature of this workshop and its reach across the campuses here. One of my main ideas for the Green Libraries Group is a Sustainability Research Symposium, so I’d be interested to explore the opportunities that arise from this event.

Resource: I absolutely love the intersectionality and creativity of all the research, but have a soft spot for the following: Click here to watch Professor Leontidis' TEDx Aberdeen talk on the key role Artificial Intelligence can play in helping to build a more sustainable world.

Question: Imagine that you’ve been invited to write for a high-profile science fiction TV show. What main points of your research would you base a story on?

Prof Astley Hastings is a charted engineer and environmental scientist with research topics spanning; decommissioning oil and gas structures, modelling the impact on the environment of low carbon energy installations and optimizing bio-energy carbon capture and storage and afforestation for greenhouse gas removal. These contribute to the energy transition, health nutrition and wellbeing and environment and biodiversity themes and providing active involvement in the decommissioning centre and the university emissions reductions committee. He is a member of the DEFRA climate change advisory board and the Institute of Mechanical Engineers Academic Assessment Committee.

Resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg

Margaret Thatcher speech kicking off the IPCC and the COP framework at the United Nations in 1989. Demonstrates how behind in combatting climate change we all are.

Question: How can the University eliminate the barriers to interdisciplinary work caused by the administrative variation between Schools and the top-down central administration that controls rather than facilitating? It seems easier to put together interdisciplinary work with other universities.

I’m a Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen and NHS Grampian. As a sociologist working in public health, I’m interested in the cultural and health dimensions of contemporary class divisions. I currently lead a project entitled ‘'Enhancing a local birth cohort for the multidisciplinary study of ageing: Aberdeen Children of the 1950s (ACONF) in the years after retirement'. I’m also finishing a PhD on subjective experiences of social mobility in the socio-historical context of Aberdeen’s oil and gas industry. I emigrated to Aberdeen in 2009 and worked in the care sector and the oil and gas industry before moving to academia.

Resource: (a clip from Darren McGarvey’s Class Wars, Ep.1 Identity Crisis, BBC Scotland): https://tinyurl.com/3z2vff4y

Question: How can (and should) we ensure that the ‘just transition’ brings cultural capital and opportunities for a ‘good’ life to Aberdeen and its people?

I am Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at the University of Aberdeen and formerly the Principal Investigator for the European Research Council-funded project ‘Past and Present Musical Encounters across the Strait of Gibraltar’ (2018–23). I completed my Masters and PhD in Ethnomusicology at Cardiff University. Following my studies, I was appointed as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge (2014–18) before becoming Senior Research Associate from 2018–20. My research interests focus on flamenco and music in the western Mediterranean, as well as theoretical perspectives around music, postcolonial studies, heritage studies, migration and cultural diplomacy. I have no background or expertise in the environmental humanities, but am at this workshop as an interested observer!

Resource: https://doi.org/10.1080/20551940.2023.2238956 – this is a review of a recently held conference on music and petrocultures.

Questions: What can the humanities (and specifically the performing/creative arts) bring to our understanding of energy transitions? Do they have the capacity to influence energy transitions?

Sara H. Stroud is a creative practitioner & lecturer with over two decades of filmmaking experience. She is a consultant for screen education Scotland and an artist. Her work has been commissioned and shown nationally by Channel 4, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Aberdeen Performing Arts and the Royal Scottish Academy.

I find inspiration in technology, human interaction and society. My recent work features social media & snapchat is often my canvas. I enjoy combining performance and prose. My work invites audiences to reflect on how technology is shaping our collective consciousness and narratives. My work is often autobiographical focusing on my lived experience as a mother, daughter & woman.

www.sarastroud.com

Resource: 'Past and present Aberdeen'. https://vimeo.com/339512971

I made this film in 2017 for an exhibition called “Home”. I recreated every shot and stood in the same place. The film was made in 1936 by Jas. E. Henderson Ltd.

My Nana was born in 1933 in Aberdeen. I was interested in how the city had changed since she was born. My Nana was working by the age of 12 delivering rowies, to folk in the West end. She would recount her orders whenever we were passing “thon solicitors hoose, he would order twa rowies and a pie”. I wish she was alive to see the resurgence of Deliveroo and the cyclical nature of how we have resurgence in acts of service to those that can afford to order a sandwich and coffee and get it delivered.

Whenever I see Deliveroo driver and I think of my Nana and wonder if everything just goes in cycles.

Questions: How do you create change in a city that is so divided? There seems to be a real disconnect and I don’t understand why. Are other cities like this?

Ines Kirschner is a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen. Her thesis (‘Novel Ecologies’) explores nature and wildlife conservation in twenty-first-century fiction, with a conceptual focus on multispecies projects of worldmaking. She attended COP26 as part of the UoA’s delegation and is a Scotland-based scholar for the 2024 British Council Scotland SGSAH EARTH Scholarship programme. Ines’s interest in the energy transition lies primarily in how it intersects with biodiversity concerns, particularly within the context of the blue humanities.

Resource: Alaimo, S. 2017. "The Anthropocene at Sea. Temporality, Paradox, Compression." In The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, edited by U. Heise, J. Christensen, and M. Niemann, 153–161.

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315766355-26/anthropocene-sea-temporality-paradox-compression-stacy-alaimo

Question: How might the arts, humanities, and sciences work together to expand our consideration of the energy transition beyond the human?

Dr Eddy Wifa is an Energy Law lecturer at the School of Law, University of Aberdeen. He has a Masters in Oil and Gas Law with Distinction and a PhD Marine Renewable Energy Risk Governance both from the University of Aberdeen. His research expertise includes oil and gas contracting, offshore energy health, safety and environmental regulation across several jurisdictions, decommissioning, regulatory theories, energy and natural resource governance, energy transition and energy justice. He has advised governments and has been a part of several research projects. He has several publications and has spoken at several conferences and events. He is currently a member of the Aberdeen University Centre for Energy Law, The Centre for Energy Transition and the Director of the African Natural Resource and Energy Law Network (ANREL).

Resource: https://www.iucn.org/resources/information-brief/role-law-enabling-just-transition

Question: In the wake of the global energy crisis, what are the implications for countries in Africa and other Global South regions, particularly when there is a reluctance to support the continuous exploitation of oil and gas?

Silvia Casini lectures on Film and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen. Her work is situated at the crossroad of visual culture and ASTS (art, science and technology studies). She has curated the exhibitions Marc Didou (The Naughton Gallery at Queen’s, Belfast), From Where Do We See? (Suttie Arts Space, Aberdeen) and, more recently, the exhibition Cities of the Future: Living Together (Bevilaqua La Masa Foundation, Venice).  Recent publications include the monograph Giving Bodies back to Data (2021, Leonardo art and science series, MIT Press).  She has now embarked on a new research project on science film festivals.

Resource: Silvia Casini 'That Obscure Object of Desire: Some Notes for a Slow Art -Science' (2022)

https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/issue/view/1188

Question: How can we design and implement art–science collaboration projects that become effective places of experimenting with present and future imaginaries related the energy crisis, highlighting the broader social, cultural and ethical issues at stake?

Dr Maja Zećo (Gray’s School of Art) is a practice-based researcher exploring identities and listening in spaces of socio-political tensions and post-conflict areas. This work informs her practice of de-colonising through critical engagement with institutional, group and individual narratives. Her sound and performance pieces have been presented internationally, including London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Zurich, Vienna and Sarajevo. Her research on the contextualities of listening through soundwalking and sound field recording was published in Organised Sound (Cambridge University Press) and Journal of Sonic Studies (Leiden University Press). 

Image credit: Living With Energy Transition Soundwalk lead by Maja Zećo, St. Fittick's Park, Aberdeen 2024. Photo by Phoebe McBride.

Resource: Maja Zećo, Silencer, CRISAP-University of Arts London 2018; Peacocks, Aberdeen 2018; UKNA, Leicester 2021; Fermynwoods, Corby 2022. https://vimeo.com/384833049

Question: Where is art practice in practice-based research?

Hi, I am Dr Ieuan Seymour, a new lecturer in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Aberdeen.  My background is in materials chemistry of energy materials, having previously worked at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and UT Austin. My research at the University of Aberdeen focuses on the development of new materials for sustainable battery and fuel cell applications, using combined computational and experiment approaches. I also have a keen interest in science outreach, with a focus of introducing school students to sustainable materials chemistry for future energy applications.

Resources:

1. AI art for scientific journal cover (attached) generated by Dall-E to show the concept of interfacial adhesion or ‘wetting’ in new solid-state battery technology. Full paper available open source at: https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/cssc.202202215

2. Recent podcast episode that I was part of exploring battery sustainability as we transition to clean energy: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/72dea88e-15d1-449d-8593-9f9739bf8cfd

3. ‘Our World in Data’, a nice external resource for visualising data on the energy transition that I regularly use in my lecture courses: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions

Questions: How can we better use art and visual media to provide a deeper understanding of the fundamental science and statistics behind the sustainable energy technology that is driving the energy transition in Aberdeen? Does new technology such as artificial intelligence have a role to play here in addition to more traditional media?

Prof. Cuesta obtained his PhD in Chemistry from the Autonomous University of Madrid in 1996 with a thesis developed at CSIC's Institute of Physical Chemistry, also in Madrid. He moved then on for three years (two of them with the support of a Marie Curie Training and Mobility of Researchers Fellowship) as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of the late Prof. D.M. Kolb at the University of Ulm (Germany). In July 2001 Prof. Cuesta was selected as Provisional Staff Scientist at the Institute of Physical Chemistry (CSIC) in Madrid, where he promoted to Staff Scientist in December 2002 and then to the Senior Scientist scale of CSIC in March 2010. Prof. Cuesta was appointed as Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen in July 2013, where he promoted to Reader in August 2016 and to Personal Chair in August 2018. He served as the Director of Research of the School of Natural and Computing Sciences from 1 August 2018 to 31 July 2021 and as the Interim Head of the School between 1 October 2021 and 31 August 2022.

Questions: Rather than one, I'd like to bring three interconnected questions. The first one is connected with the resource I am sharing: How do we reach Scotland's and other countries' ambitious goals of green hydrogen production without negatively affecting an extremely important and scarce resource like freshwater?

Second is what is the best use for that green hydrogen? Should we use it for energy conversion (in that case what, how and when) or should we rather use it for ammonia, steel etc?

Third, how do we manage to get society at large supporting the introduction of new technologies and advancing along the transition?

Resource: The resource I am bringing is a paper that has been published as a pre-print (non-peer reviewed version) in Research Square, Springer-Nature's pre-print service (we submitted it originally to Nature Communications but some of the reviewers thought this was not adequate for that journal). A revised version after the first round of reviews is being reviewed again for the Journal of Power Sources (reviewers were asking for minor revisions, so I expect this version to be accepted). The rest of the information can be found above.

I am a human geographer and my research interests look at the social aspects of sustainability, this has thus far been focussed on coastal and rural communities, their social and demographic sustainability, the changes in economic and environmental conditions impacting these communities and their livelihoods. I have an interest in community engagement and how we can better use social science evidence in planning systems including energy and marine planning. I use Mixed-methodologies (Quantitative, Qualitative, and Participatory). My ongoing work includes an ESRC project on solar planning in the UK, and other work looking at community wellbeing & EDI in coastal redevelopment projects.

Resource:

https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/fpfis/cms/farnet2/on-the-ground/good-practice/short-stories/local-cafe-helping-integrate-migrants-improve-languages_en.html

Other interesting  resources not from my own research - Moth to a flame installation at cop26: https://www.artandenergy.org/news/the-moths-to-a-flame-journey-our-film-finale

Questions: (1) How can we foster creative collaborations that engage and empower communities in energy projects?

(2) As a researcher with creative pursuits outside of academia - how can we work with arts and humanities to better utilise our own creativity in research and science communication?

Dr. Jennifer (Jen) Clarke is an Aberdeen based anthropologist, artist, and curator. An Associate Professor at Gray’s School of Art, her interdisciplinary background spans art, anthropology, and artistic research. Areas of specialisation in her artistic research include the integration of visual art and social practices as responses to (and interventions in) environmental politics and related academic knowledge production, emphasising interdisciplinarity  through collaborative and speculative approaches.  She also collaborates on and leads transnational socially engaged art projects in the UK and Japan.

Resource: Sweat, Light, and Oil: Seeing the Energy in Roy Jacobsen’s Barrøy Novels.” Edda: Scandinavian Journal of Literary Research 109.2 (2022), 126-139. https://www.idunn.no/doi/10.18261/edda.109.2.4

Questions: What do you (or we) hope to learn or ‘achieve’ from a 1-day workshop about art (or art + science) and petrocultures? What timeframes are we all working with?

Dr Rebecca Macklin is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and incoming Interdisciplinary Fellow in Social Inclusion and Cultural Diversity at the University of Aberdeen. Having gained her PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Leeds in 2020, her research sits at the intersection of Indigenous studies, the environmental humanities and feminist theory. Her current Leverhulme project explores how Indigenous creators are using the arts to navigate intersecting experiences of colonial extraction in North America. In 2022, she co-founded the Intersecting Energy Cultures Working Group to explore how the arts and humanities methods can help to support community-driven research and energy justice initiatives, funded by the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy (University of Pennsylvania).

Resource: https://www.thunderbirdstrike.com/action

Questions: How do you position yourself in relation to this research? What experiences, places, and people have shaped your perspective?

After completing my PhD with no corrections from the University of Aberdeen Business School, I joined as a lecturer in May 2022. I am Accountancy PGR coordinator and Library Representative of the Business School. My area of research is critical accounting. I am interested in using critical theory and different forms of linguistic analysis to explore issues such as corporate accountability, modern slavery accounting and accountability, gender equality, climate change and sustainability issues. My work has been published in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ) and Critical Perspectives on Accounting (CPA). 

Resource:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361368211001152

Question: What are the structural factors that contribute to the energy crisis and what is the way forward?

Dylan is a PhD researcher at the University of Aberdeen, studying the intersection of contemporary music composition and the changing relationship between humanity and nature. Through considerations in aesthetics as well as political and environmental philosophy, and an applied approach to research, Dylan aims to better understand the functionality of music on a timeless subject within a rapidly changing context.

Resource: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/186MxNSOU1Z2UhKe4_mzAV4hqAn8_U8il?usp=sharing

Question: ‘Lyotard argues, knowledge is no longer organised towards the fulfilment of universal human goals. Instead, postmodern knowledge is valued in terms of its efficiency and profitability in a market-driven global economy.’ (Malpas, 2003, 28) Thus it can be observed that profitability legitimises knowledge. Considering this statement, where or how then, do the arts and the sciences which learn of information counter to the interests of the economic hegemony find legitimacy?

Malpas, S. (2003). Jean-François Lyotard, Routledge Critical Thinkers, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, London and New York.

Eleonora Belfiore joined the University of Aberdeen in January 2022 as inaugural Director of Social Inclusion and Cultural Diversity within a newly established Interdisciplinary Institute. She has published extensively on cultural politics and policy, and particularly the place that notions of the ‘social impacts’ of the arts have had in British cultural policy discourses. She is one of the world leading scholars in cultural value research. For Palgrave, she edits the book series New Directions in Cultural Policy Research, and she is Co-Editor in Chief journal Cultural Trends. Ele is currently researching the labour conditions of socially engaged arts practice.

Resource: https://ethicsofcare.org/joan-tronto/

Question: How might the cultural and creative industries enable the green transition?

Laura Pannekoek (she/her) is a PhD Candidate in Communication at Concordia University in Montreal. She is currently a SGSAH EARTH fellow at the University of Glasgow where she is researching the proposed remediation of abandoned coal mine workings to geoenergy infrastructures. Laura is interested in the role that institutional geology plays in cultural conceptions of the earth and the energy transition discourses, climate politics, and environmental regulations that emerge from that.

Resource: My ‘resource’ is a short text by Jennifer Wenzel about this resource gaze. How does a mining company see? And what if in the current transition economy (geoenergy, critical raw materials, nuclear etc.) the material mined might be different from hydrocarbons, but the way of seeing remains the same? 

Questions: Recently I’ve been coming back to the idea of a resource gaze and how resource aesthetics/modes of looking/visuality are central to the idea that a certain kind of looking at a material precedes the extracting of a material. And how creative approaches can circumvent that. Not through representation but through a kind of epistemology. What kind of new resource aesthetics come with a post-extractive future? What kinds of visuality or ways of looking emerge?

Vix is a student on the Film, Visual Culture and Art Management MLitt programme at the University of Aberdeen with a personal interest in the inner workings of cultural industries and policy. As a Contemporary Art Practice graduate from Gray’s School of Art, they are aware of and wants to know more about the impact of oil funding on various artistic institutions in Aberdeen.

Resource: Altun, A. (2020) ‘National issues and their reflections in The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil’ RumeliDE Journal of Language and Literature Studies, 21, pp.764-773, DOI: 10.29000/rumelide.843342.

(On Primo: https://abdn.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=cdi_unpaywall_primary_10_29000_rumelide_843342&context=PC&vid=44ABE_INST:44ABE_VU1&lang=en&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&adaptor=Primo%20Central&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,Cheviot,%20Stag%20and%20Black%20Black%20Oil&offset=0)

Question: Is Aberdeen successfully diversifying its industries away from oil and gas to adequately support itself in the future?

I am a visual artist and writer based in Aberdeen. I studied Contemporary Art Practice at Gray’s School of Art and did the MLitt Art Writing at the Glasgow School of Art. I moved back to Aberdeen in February to start a practice based PhD at Gray’s – looking at fishing communities in the north-east of Scotland. Blurring the line between the real and the imagined, my work explores themes of folk tradition, maritime histories, and esoteric practices through speculative fiction. I am particularly interested in how speculative fictions can emerge from both industrial and post-industrial places and communities. My works are often poetic tributes to hidden histories. These semi fictional narratives are activated through props, performances and video.

Resource: Marie Chantal Hamrock (2020). 'There is Something in the Ground, There is Something in the Sky'. (11mins)

The work is available to watch here.

Question: How could artistic interventions or speculative fictions be used to reveal causality between seemingly unrelated phenomena i.e. the history of extractivism in Aberdeen and the move towards energy transition?

Rachel Venturini is currently a Masters Student at the University of Aberdeen, studying Film, Visual Culture and Arts Managment. As a manager at Aberdeen Performing Arts she has assisted in the running of many events, performances and festivals over the last 8 years in Aberdeen through work and has assisted in running workshops in Inverness. An occasional film producer, Rachel has worked across several short films in Aberdeen with the most recent one being Nights by UNReality Films. Currently Rachel is working on her dissertation in investigating how technology can make live events accessible to all and hopes to develop this further in future work. 

Question: How can public engagement through performance such as dance and theatre reach out to a new generation in educating them on climate?

Dave is a geologist and currently the Head of School of Geosciences. After completing his PhD he worked in industry for a few years, initially offshore then as a Scientific Advisor. His expertise is largely the study of carbon in many aspects of geological sciences (petroleum systems at high temperatures; faulted or folded carbonaceous rocks, meteorites and their impacts) with more recently applying techniques to understanding wildfires through geological time and their relevance to fire intensity and duration today. More recently Dave has been working with a wider team applying a technique known as Raman spectroscopy to cremated archaeological artefacts and even cancers.

Dave is a beekeeper in his spare time, opening up an array of new areas of appreciation, particularly the common patterns and shapes that are repeated in many aspects of the natural world related to structural integrity, for example the hexagonal shape of honeycomb, a feature often seen in certain rocks.

Dave is also a mad outdoor enthusiast, spending evenings and weekends either climbing, mountain biking, paddle boarding, hillwalking and so on, often living barefoot, even in the winter!

Resource: Trying to source rocks for the workshop.

Question: How can we more readily facilitate interactions between the sciences and the arts whilst not diluting either?

Joey Wiles Eagle is a part-time MLitt student of Film, Visual Culture and Arts Management at the University of Aberdeen, having studied his BA(Hons) in Film Studies and Production at Queen's University Belfast. When not studying, Joey works as an HR Coordinator for a digital and telecommunications start-up.

During his time at the University of Aberdeen, Joey has focussed his creative efforts on documentary practice; working with partners such as Aberdeen F.C, and considering local niches such as the rare wooden graveboards scattered across Aberdeenshire kirkyards. He is currently writing his MLitt dissertation on the elevation of nonhuman factors as narrative agents in the Australian 'outback film'.

Resource: Proposed Burbo Offshore Windfarm, 2002."The highest level of visual impact is predicted on Formby Point. Moderate impacts are predicted at Fort Perch Rock and the North Wirral Coastal Park either side of Leasowe Lighthouse."

https://democracy.wirral.gov.uk/Data/Cabinet/20021113/Agenda/envped021022rep01_6912.pdf

Question: How can be film be used as a mechanism for the promotion and propagation of interdisciplinary research?