Making Energy Infrastructure: Tactical Oscillations and Cosmopolitics

The infrastructuring of environments to integrate renewable energy sources into the power grid is a key concern in Denmark and many other countries. To redesign current energy systems and ease the transition into a low-carbon future, energy infrastructures must become a matter of public interest and concern. This paper analyses an attempt to make energy infrastructures a public issue. Focusing on the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI), a biannual competition that invites artist, architects, and engineers to submit ideas for large-scale public artworks that can generate renewable energy, LAGI offered an attempt to spur peoples’ imagination with regards to energy. The article shows that this effort to make energy a public issue was premised on a set of tactical oscillations. Tactical oscillations are ways of moving with and around various kinds of stakeholders to ensure the success of the competition. While the project had negligible impacts on any on-going infrastructure redesign practices in the Danish setting, the case opens for new questions around how and by what means renewable energy sources become part of established energy infrastructures. It also raises the important question of the possible role played by art and design when imagining and designing for new ways of living with energy.