With few exceptions, historians, theorists, and critics have ignored or downplayed the energies—all of them—that many practitioners and participants across the arts, music, dance, literature, etc. have understood to be operating in their works and the world. The new field of Energy Humanities has both encouraged and constrained investigation into energies by effectively equating energy with sources and systems of fuel and power generation. However, artists did not use this sense of the word until the 1970s, along with everyone else, after the so-called energy crisis. Artists have said many more energies, their cognates and associations, before, during and since this time. A pluralistic approach to the historical and cultural analysis of energies was introduced by Douglas Kahn (USyd) in the Energies in the Arts (MIT Press, 2019) and is being developed methodologically, with Dr. Pia van Gelder (SoAD, ANU), in The Energies Artists Say (in-progress). Facilitated by Kahn’s visit to ANU these researchers will share this research in the following event:

This workshop invites researchers from the ANU at large to discuss their research in the space of energy humanities and energies in the arts, interpreted broadly as disciplines across the arts. The workshop will begin with a series of short talks delivered by participants followed by a discussion exploring observations and possible connections and critiques. We invite researchers established, ECRs and HDRs to attend and participate.