How one dimensional and neurotic the average person’s relationship to the word energy has become! The term seems only to conjure associations fraught with problems such as energy consumption, energy budget, energy crisis, energy saving, and energy resources. Yet the sight of this book alone allows us to breathe a little more easily, freeing the mind and rapidly leading it to the dimensions of the absolute and incommensurate.
It goes without saying that everyone knows how crucial energy is not only to modern life but also, and wholly a priori, to life itself. Nevertheless, awareness and repression are closely related.
What happens then, when we pick up an artistic publication and, turning to the front cover, are welcomed by the title, «Encyclopedia of Energy, T – Z, index, Vol. 6», the page’s serene solar symbol and its confidence-inspiring scientific look? One is spirited away into a world of lexical order, knowledge and the enumeration of astonishing facts. Under the heading Chronology we read that solar energy reached the Earth «4.5 billion years ago». Subsequent entries encourage us to linger and dream – and take us up to the present era. It soon becomes clear, however, that what we are holding in our hands is a camouflaged object, an intellectual trampoline!
On the one hand the book builds confidence, trust in the universal, even though we know that the uncertainty principle rules and most dates and facts are merely estimations which can be revised or become obsolete at a moment’s notice. Yet at the same time we gain access to the domain of the well-measured dissemination of knowledge. Parentheses open up and one is transported to new plateaus in the world of culture and art. Which plateau is superior to the others? Here we are concerned with the establishment of relationships between the domains, the methodical forging of connections. […]
Epilogue by Bice Curiger
Contributing authors: Barbara Basting, Carlpeter Braegger, Ingmar M. Braun, Horst Bredekamp, Gerlinde Bretzigheimer, Bice Curiger, Sandra Delacourt, Walter Fasnacht, Cynthia Gavranic, Mandy Gnägi, Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller, Anke Hoffmann, Jürg von Ins, Steven Jacobs, Claudia Jolles, Fridolin Krausmann, Latitudes: Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna, Pedro de Llano, Etienne Lullin, Dorothee Messmer, Felix Müller, Irene Müller, Andreas Münch, Stefan Paradowski, Fiona Parry, Michael Pfister, Brita Polzer, Jürg Rychener, Rolf Peter Sieferle, Philip Ursprung, Andreas Vogel, Yvonne Volkart und Susann Wintsch
Editors: Kunstraum Walcheturm,
Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller
Publisher: Edizioni Periferia, Lucerne/Poschiavo
Graphic design: Emanuel Tschumi
Print run: 500
Supported by the Dr. Georg and Josi Guggenheim Foundation
182 pages, 20 x 27 cm, in two colours, linen binding
ISBN: 978-3-906016-24-5