Energies

Swiss Institute (SI) presents Energies, an international group exhibition that unfolds throughout the entire building at 38 St Marks Pl and expands into numerous partner locations in the surrounding East Village community. The exhibition includes influential historic artworks alongside contemporary positions and new commissions that address ecological affordances and effects, social formations, and political arrangements attached to energy past and present.

A largely forgotten yet influential piece of neighborhood history forms the starting point for the show. During the oil crisis in 1973, inhabitants of one of the first sweat equity co-ops, located at 519 E 11th Street, installed a landmark two-kilowatt wind turbine on the roof of their torched building. This machine generated electricity and supplied the community with light during the many power cuts in the city at the time, even supplying the residents with light during the great outage of 1977. Paired with solar panels and insulation efforts, it was one of the first in the nation to feed electricity back into the grid, much to the consternation of the largest and near-monopoly utility provider, Con Edison, who retaliated with a major lawsuit. Receiving unexpected support from a former Attorney General, the co-op improbably won the case, which changed US energy regulations forever by mandating that utilities providers accept decentrally generated energy. This little-known, community-driven history thus helped usher in subsequent revolutionary, albeit flawed, advances toward cogeneration, conservation, and green and renewable energy production.

In our current moment of ecological crisis marked by record-high rates of carbon emissions, habitat destruction through fossil fuel extraction, infrastructure disruptions due to extreme weather, competing geopolitical interests, energy poverty, and contentions around green colonialism, Energies explores global issues related to energy through a specific lens rooted in local history. Through artistic perspectives, the exhibition expands outward from the 1970s East Village wind and solar array, looking at this small-scale historical model that collectively led to major change, to imagine cautiously optimistic, community-driven energy futures.