This speculative video imagines a dystopian future in which political power is determined by the ability to harvest solar energy. Following a global energy crisis, responsibility for energy production and consumption is shifted entirely onto households and territories, transforming solar power from a shared resource into a source of inequality and control.
Although solar energy is widely promoted as a sustainable alternative, access to solar infrastructure in this imagined future is uneven. The inability to afford or maintain solar panels gives rise to new social roles, including solar thieves, surveillance agents, and security guards tasked with protecting energy assets. Solar power simultaneously evolves into the foundation of a new belief system, complete with its own ethics and punishments for transgression.
At a global scale, economic hierarchies are reconfigured. Regions in the Global South, rich in sunlight, accumulate wealth by renting out so-called “fertile” solar land to other nations. This apparent shift in power soon triggers renewed forms of territorial exploitation, as states and corporations begin planning the colonization of sun-rich regions in order to secure monopolies over energy production.
Through this fictional scenario, the video exposes how renewable energy, when embedded within existing political and economic structures, may reproduce the same logics of extraction, surveillance, and inequality it is often claimed to resolve.
Intro
While solar energy is widely promoted as a sustainable solution to social and environmental problems, this project recognizes that such framing is often idealized and commodified. Renewable energy, when uncritically celebrated, can obscure inequalities and unintended consequences. Sun as a New Currency seeks to highlight underrepresented perspectives and invite participation from those whose voices are often unheard in discussions about energy, ethics, and sustainability.
The project creates a space to explore the complex intersections of solar energy, geopolitics, and social justice. It asks: who benefits from the transition to “sustainable energy,” and who is excluded or exploited? What does sustainability truly mean when issues like energy waste, resource extraction, and inequitable access remain unresolved? To explore these questions, the project envisions a dystopian future in which political power is determined by control over solar energy. Using critical making and collective reflection, the team constructs this speculative world, incorporating diverse narratives and perspectives. Audiences are invited to contribute their own visions such as short stories, audio, images, or films.. which are integrated into a collective world-building platform. Through this participatory approach, critical fiction becomes a method of research, enabling layers of complexity to emerge and insights to circulate among participants.
As part of this approach, the project combines rapid iterations of narrative elements with collective reflection on the evolving world. Narrative elements can take many forms, including film clips, audio fragments, physical objects, or written texts. This methodology allows the speculative world to expand dynamically while encouraging participants to think critically about the social, political, and ethical dimensions of renewable energy.
About Open Lab #02: The Metabolic Sublime
Open Lab #02 The Metabolic Sublime is part of a series of interdisciplinary laboratories hosted by Medialab Matadero to explore collective intelligence through collaborative production. Themes include energy sovereignty, agrologistic automation, phantom extractivism, territorial instrumentalization, residual circularity, decarbonization, and geoengineering. The lab examines how planetary-scale energy systems can be reimagined and how their implementation transforms human behaviors, practices, and cultures.
Presentation by Yujin Joung. Sun as a new currency, Openlab #02, Matadero Medialab
Project idea and production: Yujin Joung
Collaborators: Sandu Cojocari, Howard Melncyczuk, Rawan Khater, Nawon Koo
Project guidance: Marina Otero, Liam Young, Joana Moll
Friendly advice from: Julian Gresham, Kris De Decker