Helios

Helios 1: Simon Orpana's Gasoline Dreams

Tagged:

Literature

Activism

Fossil Fuels

Cultural Change

12 Min Read

May 3, 2021

By

Simon Orpana
Caleb Wellum

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.

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EH in Practice Part 1: Libraries and Laboratories: Teaching Energy Humanities in Literary Studies

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In this reflection on teaching energy humanities in literary studies, Carolin Slickers shares how a seminar at the University of Bonn challenged students to see energy not as a topic but as a structure that shapes literature, infrastructure, and daily life. From Frankenstein to solarpunk, students traced how energy moves through fiction, and how fiction, in turn, shapes their understanding of work, technology, and climate futures.

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all articles

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Archives of the Planetary Mine: Culture, Nature Extraction, and Energy across the Americas

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Researchers work with high school students from 18 countries to address energy futures

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Reassessing Nuclear Energy in the Shadow of Toxicity Discourses

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Heritage, Petroculture, and the Green Transition

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A Social Ecology of Capital

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The Entangled Histories of Cane and Beet in Ilona Németh: Eastern Sugar

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Fieldwork in the Energy Humanities

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The Ecological Stakes of America’s New Cold War with China

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What Biden’s election means for climate justice in the United States

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What's your energy story?

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Forum on Carbon Democracy Part 2: Carbon Democracy: Unfinished Business

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EH in Practice Part 3: The World of Energy and The Myth of Containerization

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Making Poetry with the “Production Language” of Petrochemical Industry

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Solar Energy at the Museum of the Future

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The Religious Dimensions of Wildfire

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Energy Humanities in Practice: Teaching, Technology, Transition

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We Were In It: Stories About Energy Transition

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Helios 4: Kazim Ali and Robert Boschman in Conversation

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Solar Technology and Global Environmental Justice: The Vision and the Reality

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EH in Practice Part 2: Museums and the Challenge of Cultural Decarbonization

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Hydrogen in the Fossil Fuel Landscape

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Forum on Carbon Democracy Part 3: Maintaining the Rule of Experts? Interrogating the Contradictions of Energy

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Global conspiracy? The dangers of the anti-Alberta energy campaign

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Changing the Conversation on Energy at the Centre for Energy Ethics

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The Black Gold Tapestry

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Vreed-en-Hoop (Peace and Hope): Signpost of the Oil Oligarchy and Political Party Paramountcy in Guyana.

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EH in Practice Part 1: Libraries and Laboratories: Teaching Energy Humanities in Literary Studies

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Extraction Ecologies and the Literature of the Long Exhaustion