Energy Futures at FH Potsdam

Sometimes we get the opportunity to teach. “Energy Futures” was an intense three-week long course on speculative design led by Helge together with Prof. Wettach. The brief was to imagine relevant, plausible and engaging future scenarios that pose critical questions about our personal and collective energy management. The scenarios were then communicated through film. During the workshop five student teams set out to be both visionaries and reporters – creating part documentaries and part science- (or rather social-) fictions – to question common notions of our energy future, and to propose compelling alternatives.

Robin Rundkvist and Benjamin Ditzen took the idea of power saving activities to extremes. In “Walking Right” people not only worry about energy consuming appliances but there’s a “Department of Energy Consumption” that educates about saving energy by refraining from physical activity:

The film from Ann-Kristin Kühl and Ulrich Siegmeier is set in a future world of energy scarcity. However, whenever there are strong winds near the coast, people celebrate huge parties while wasting all the excess energy generated from wind power plants that couldn’t be otherwise captured. For a few stormy days each year, people experience extravagant energy abundance.