Trigger #5: Energy
How can one comprehend the relation between energy and photography or visual culture today?
Trigger’s newest edition is an exploration of that question – and broadly thematizes alternative approaches to energy through photography, the issue of society’s decarbonisation, the call for repair and collective values. Trigger #5: Energy is the FUTURES* year book of 2023. The magazine will be launched in Antwerp at FOMU on November 14 during the FUTURES meet-up.
Energy is a marker for the exhaustion of the planet through mining, drilling, forest clearance – the list is endless. But energy was always more than fuel or the material potential for action (or progress). You will find oil (corporations), renewable energies, Buddhism, war energies, female anger, spiritual forests, and more, all mixed in the same jar. This issue brings to the surface some of the different histories and cultures of energy that are often invisible today. It explores new possibilities for imagining energy, through transitions and new vocabularies, and for how photography can be involved in all of this.
Left: Cover image: female anger expressed by Roshanak Morrowatian, photo by Tina Farifteh. Right: back cover.
This issue therefore highlights the power, and the will, to generate alternative futures. It gives attention to the ways archives can become ‘energies of protest’ and cultural institutions ‘spaces of survival’ in response to extractivism and capitalism. It approaches energy from an immaterial perspective too – by asking how community and individual energies can be used to cultivate healthier ecosystems within the arts. Many contributions redirect our energies towards notions of female anger, spirituality, degrowth, justice, generosity, collectivity, and sensitivity.
Through this issue you’ll get another understanding of waste, the darkroom, and photography itself. It is photography itself that shows us possible routes, beyond the human, to spiritual energies that can help us repair and heal and ultimately centre (photography on) non-extractive values (and techniques). Trigger #5 consists of thirteen contributions (essays, artist contributions, conversations) which engender possible ways photography might start to unlearn entrenched ideas and habits concerning the use and abuse of energy.
Contributions by: Duncan Wooldridge, Sylvia Ballhause, Máté Dobokay, Agata Madejska, Mariama Attah, Euridice Zaituna Kala, René D’amour Hitimana, Risk Hazekamp, Eline Benjaminsen, Tanja Engelberts, Bas Blaasse, Hannah Fletcher, Hiroki Shin, Cara Daggett, Sheng-Wen Lo, Cale Garrido, Kateryna Radchenko, Yana Kononova, Tina Farifteh, Yvette Monahan, Hiền Hoàng, Sebastian Koudijzer, Léonard Pongo, Caroline Woolard.
BUY TRIGGER MAGAZINE #5 ENERGY
* FUTURES is a Europe-based photography platform bringing together the global photography community to support and nurture the professional development of emerging artists across the world. This publication is co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union. On an editorial level, it is the result of the synergies of four FUTURES partners during 2022-2023: FOMU – the museum of photography (Antwerp), FOTODOK (Utrecht), PhotoIreland (Dublin), and Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center (Budapest). Trigger #5 is composed by the editorial board consisting of Julia Gelezova & Ángel Luis González Fernández (PhotoIreland), Emese Mucsi (Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center), Daria Tuminas (FOTODOK), and Tom Viaene (FOMU). With the collaboration of the contributing artists and professionals from the FUTURES community: Eline Benjaminsen, Máté Dobokay, Tanja Engelberts, Tina Farifteh, Hiền Hoàng, Euridice Zaituna Kala, Yana Kononova, Sebastian Koudijzer, Sheng-Wen Lo, Yvette Monahan, Léonard Pongo.
