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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The Nonhuman Narratives of Energy: Multispecies Encounters in Extraction

Josephine Taylor

In this Author’s Note, Josephine Taylor outlines the intellectual and ethical foundations of her recent book, The Nonhuman Narratives of Energy, tracing how animal life has been rendered absent within dominant energy narratives. Drawing on animal studies, energy humanities, and science fiction, she argues for an ethics of witnessing multispecies vulnerability as a way to rethink extraction, petroculture, and the possibilities of a world after oil.

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June 6, 2025

EH in Practice Part 6: Preserving Oil: A Conversation with Educators at the Norwegian Petroleum Museum and Oil Museum of Canada

Camille-Mary Sharp (Western University), Julia Stangeland (Norwegian Petroleum Museum), and Christina Sydorko (Oil Museum of Canada)

Faced with the contradiction of heritage preservation in an age of ecological collapse, museums around the globe have begun to reckon with their responsibility towards climate mitigation. Often ignored in these discussions are oil museums, understudied cultural attractions where museum workers are tasked with researching, interpreting, and exhibiting the artifacts and histories of an energy industry in transition. This interview, conducted by Camille-Mary Sharp virtually in April 2024, brings into conversation two educators from distinct institutions: the Norwegian Petroleum Museum (Stavanger, Norway) and the Oil Museum of Canada (Oil Springs, Canada). Working ocean, seas, and lakes apart, Julia Stangeland and Christina Sydorko nevertheless find common ground—both raised on farms and trained as teachers, they now channel their passion and expertise towards critical energy literacy for current and future generations. This discussion reflects the interviewees’ individual views and is not representative of their respective institutions.

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all articles

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Solar Energy at the Museum of the Future

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Energy Politics and Discourse in Canada: Probing Progressive Extractivism

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Pipeline Populism: Grassroots Environmentalism in the Twenty-First Century

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Instagram as Public Pedagogy: Online Activism and the Trans Mountain Pipeline

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

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Canadian Oil and Soil: Romantic Nationalism and Eco-Fascism

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Helios 1: Simon Orpana's Gasoline Dreams

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

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Greening Canada?: Energy and Climate Policy in the 2020 Throne Speech

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Making Poetry with the “Production Language” of Petrochemical Industry

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Visualizing A Sustainable Energy Future

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Making and Meeting Online

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Helios 2: Anne Pasek on Changing Methods in a Changing Climate

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Rogues in the Postcolony: Narrating Extraction and Itinerancy in India

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Low Carbon Justice in Canada's Net-Zero Transition

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Forum on Fossil Capital Part 4: From Steam Fetishism to Solar Fetishism

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We Were In It: Stories About Energy Transition

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

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Forum on Carbon Democracy Part 4: The Mitchell Effect

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Break Time

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Line 5: Dismantling as World-Building

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

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EH in Practice Part 5: Virtue Ethics and Ecosabotage

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Fueling Civilization: Unraveling the Energetic Metabolism of Societies

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Helios 4: Kazim Ali and Robert Boschman in Conversation

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Fieldwork in the Energy Humanities

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Making climate information accessible to rural farmers in Kenya

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Heritage, Petroculture, and the Green Transition

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As the Hydrocarbon Era Comes to an End, We Need a New Focus for Economics

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Trying to Speak Goose