Helios 1: Simon Orpana's Gasoline Dreams

12 Min Read

May 3, 2021

Welcome to Helios, an EH interview series about new research in the energy humanities and the creative processes that bring it to life.

Our inaugural interview features Simon Orpana, an artist and researcher from Hamilton, ON whose work renders sophisticated concepts and complex histories into arresting graphic narrative form. Fans of Icon Books’ “Graphic Guides” will appreciate Orpana’s ability to create compelling visualizations that retain the integrity of their source material.

EH editor Caleb Wellum sat down with Simon over Zoom on April 9 to talk about his new book with Fordham University Press, his process for turning ideas into images, and the life-affirming wastefulness of art.

Click the download link below to read the full illusrated interview.

Download the interview
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Read More

August 18, 2023

Shouhei Tanaka

In the second of a two-part series on Racial Capital by emerging researchers, Shouhei Tanaka (Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Southern California) explores how Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan’s novel Solar Storms (1995) fictionalizes the James Bay Cree hydroelectric conflict and places it in the longer histories of North American settler colonialism. For Tanaka, energy modernity is a history of empire and the future of energy must necessarily be a future of decolonization.

Read
June 28, 2024

Jordan B. Kinder

In a surprising turn, Canada’s oil and gas industry has gone silent following the passage of Bill C-59 on June 20, 2024. This new legislation, amending the Competition Act to penalize misleading environmental claims, has prompted major industry players like the Pathways Alliance and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers to curtail their online presence. For a decade, Jordan B. Kinder, a scholar in media studies and environmental humanities, has studied the cultural politics of energy, infrastructure, media, and environment, coining the term "petroturfing" to describe the oil industry's fake grassroots advocacy. In his commentary on the oil industry's response to the bill, Kinder notes the benefits of the bill but also warns against putting too much stock in discursive struggles over the oil sands when what is needed is more immediate action.

Read
all articles