DAY 7: Learning Through Provocations
by Ahad Katera at Lab.073 in ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, 13 april 2017
Ahad Katera (Tanzania) shared how he consistently build and scaled up his start up Guavay. He did so by celebrating and sharing small successes instead of waiting for reaching the one big goal; by having the courage to ask people for support and advice; and by spending more time listening instead of talking and being open for feed-back. But this was not the main subject of this DAY OF LEARNING: from different participants came very surprising views on Energy. I was witnessing this special meeting at the research department of of grid operator Enexis, ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
Allow me to be frank and to make some quick assumptions while I start with a more personal note in this paragraph. I have little experience with large corporations, but some experience nonetheless. This experience didn’t spark much trust in me for the companies running the Dutch Agriculture and Agri-tech sector. My personal experience is not only the complexity and inflexibility of the structure of the corporation, but foremost the inflexibility, the closed-mindedness of the managers running it, since I have had yet to meet the first person who was capable, or even willing, to think other then the interest of the corporation they embody. So, you must understand the tremendous curiosity I sensed arriving at Enpuls (Enexis), asking myself whether today would leave me with different conclusions.
And it did.
Exploring Energy
One by one we enter Enpuls, an explorative hub pioneering in the energy transition, initiated by Enexis; a Dutch corporation managing the energy network in The Netherlands, providing almost 6 million homes with energy. We are getting together today for the occasion of a DAY OF LEARNING on the theme of ‘Energy’, serving as a kickoff for a two week long creative-in-residency program. Enpuls has invited Ahad Katera, CEO of Guavay, a producer organic fertilizer in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and former Age of Wonderland fellow.
The set up of the day was clear, five thought-provoking talks would be given among fifteen invitees, consisting of Enpuls explorers, Enexis employees, food- and product design students, the Age of Wonderland team and of course Ahad Katera. There was little time to get acquainted with one-another, yet soon enough we would find ourselves reflecting collectively on the input given.
“what grade would you give your energy today, and why?”
“I have hit the ground running today” I say, “I left my house after a quick breakfast. I ate little, too little, for the kind of day we have ahead of us. Although I have celebrated the weekend with friends and family around one table, which has given me much good energy. So I’d say, a firm 7.8.”
This is the start of a short dialogue in which we engage with the notion that we ourselves are energy. By doing so we verbalize the abstract concept of energy, could this be the ‘secret life of energy’?
What does Energy want?
When we think of ourselves as energy then we can turn the conversation 180 degrees around, and think of energy as an agency on its own. The next speaker, Timm Donke, continues this question as he hands us tools, or rather a framework for thinking and speaking about energy. Donke — a German design student who is currently in his fourth and final year of his studies at the Food-Non-Food department at the Design Academy Eindhoven — took us through his path as a design student. Through his interest in permaculture, he has understood the hidden flows of energy in natural system. Because he sees a necessary challenge in understanding the energy we are depending on, he suggests to humanize energy, while raising the question; What does Energy want?
If we allow ourselves to be provoked by such a question, we can, for a moment, step out of the ordinary, we give permission to think further than what we assume to be. Through this one question, Donke opened-up a space in which we could think, tinker and tweak our assumptions freely. Katera directly noticed that something, or rather someone, was missing in this conversation. It was Energy itself. And he placed an empty chair among us. “That’s where Energy is sitting right now”.
Does Energy want to move, does it want to be left alone or does it rather want to respond when triggered? When you give energy a push, does it move because it wants to move, or does it move to find again it’s balance and is it constantly searching for an equilibrium?
Living together with Energy
Now, we have discussed energy as an entity of which we are highly dependent. To regard energy as such, brings us further in our dialogue around the complications we face in living together with Energy. To dive deeper into our relationship with Energy Arne Hendriks, artist and curator of Age of Wonderland, carried this collective train of thought forward by bringing two of his current projects to the table; ‘Fatberg’ and ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’. The Fatberg project is inviting us to get acquainted with a new form of energy, namely the disposed fat in our sewage, which is causing the system to become clogged. This fat is manifesting itself, it is living a life on its own, below our feet and we seem to be the leading agency of this material. So we better get to know it. To do so, Hendriks is building an island of fat at the NDSM-shipping wharf in Amsterdam in order to experiment, play, interact with this new material.
With the ongoing research project The Incredible Shrinking Man, Hendriks argues constructively how we could start looking different at our desire for growth, which is de driving factor behind our ecological demands. He does so, quite effectively, by asking the question: what if we were to become fifty centimeters tall? Consequently, he supports this question with a growing amount of scientific evidence that this would be beneficial for our health, and lower our ecological demands. However desirable or not, the provocation being made that since we, the human species, are demanding such a high amount of energy, the energy we need to feed and mobilize ourselves could be reduced with 97% if we only admitted to the idea of collectively growing smaller. And this might even be possible in the near future.
Again, this speaker provokes us to speculate beyond what is, by asking us ‘what if…?’
What if we could save our energy surpluses caused by jetlags? What if we could charge batteries from Earths’ gravity? What if we could harvest the energy of falling meteorites? If happiness or love is also energy, could we then transform this into electrical power to light a lamp?
Not the destiny, but the road towards it
The purpose of the ‘what if…?’-thinking that Hendriks proposes is not to ask yourself whether something is feasible or morally right, its’ purpose is to ask see where these speculations will bring us. The value of putting a man on the moon, is not the destiny, but the road towards it.
Where Hendriks has triggered us how to relate to energy personally, Ahad Katera steps in again, sharing his relationship with energy. His neighborhood in Dar es Salaam is subject of frequent power cuts; a phenomenon we hardly know in The Netherlands, where energy is available anywhere, anytime. He describes the absence of energy as an opportunity for doing fieldwork or for going to the bank, where he now doesn’t mind losing time while waiting in the queue. Katera explains how he shares his energy bill with his neighbors and how therefore energy has become a common concern. I expected that this would lead towards a more conscious attitude towards energy. Yet, this was not the point that he was going to make. Katera instead emphasized how this monthly ritual of collectively paying the energy bill has become a social affair between him and his neighbors.
Furthermore, when a power cut occurs again, people tend to go out of their houses and their offices and they meet in the streets. We wonder what would happen in The Netherlands if we would create power cuts on purpose, to save energy and to bring neighborhoods together. A similar example is fasting, if you eat 8 hours each day, and then fast for 16 (8 of which you will be sleeping anyways), then your body will get used to using its’ energy reserves. In the beginning it would be difficult, yet after a week you won’t notice any difference. Could this be the same for our electrical power? Would it be desirable?
On my way back home I feel energized by the remarkable amount of input gained in one day, and the open-ness and the willingness of the Enpuls ‘Explorers’ (which is their actual title) to investigate and re-think the road towards a sustainable future for The Netherlands.
And the slogan of Katera ‘No change without exchange’, is still in my head…
