The Power & Illumination Project #4

Energy Action #1: Copenhagen

In 2008, a new “fitness-generator”, specially developed for the Power & Illumination Project by technical designer Johannes Köpp, was finalized, allowing the project to increase it’s efficiency considerably.

From this point on, the Power & Illumination Project entered into a new phase, reducing its visibility and focusing mainly on the task of energy-providing. The first such “energy-action” took place in February 2009 in cooperation with Internationalistisk Ideale – a Copenhagen-based journal on contemporary art and culture, created and edited by artists and theorists: http://www.ideale.dk/.

Collaborating with he fitness center Elixia Vitalclub Berlin Mitte, The Power & Illumination Project provided the electricity for the layout and editing of Internationalistisk Ideale’s second edition, which was focusing on contemporary visions of Utopia and was connected to the simultaneous Utopia-exhibition at Arken Museum of Modern Art.

The release of Internationalistisk Ideale #2 – Utopia took place in the exhibition space Torget at Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen

The Power & Illumination Project is based on the idéa of using fitness-centers as sources of energy. The kinetic energy being generated here is converted to electical energy, and is used to produce and mediate knowledge regarding the global energy balance and it’s political consequences.

The project does not operate with an economy based on financial profit, but rather with a target-oriented gathering and distribution of resources that would otherwise have gone to waste. The focus here is on the relationship between the power source and the power consumption. From this perspective, The P & I Project can be seen as a way of converting physical power into the power of knowledge.

The P & I Project was originally designed with the state of California as a model, as circumstances here provide an optimal basis for putting theory into practice. The fundamental idea, however, is applicable on most industrialized societies in the western world today - large and small.

The P & I Project has been going on since 2004, and is under continuous development.

technical development
Johannes Köpp

at Internationalistisk Ideale
Marie Kølbæk Iversen, Camma Juel Jepsen,
Louise Hold Sidenius, Morten Ernlund Jørgensen, Ferdinand Ahm Krag

at Elixia
Nico Herzog

project assistant
Meri Sidsel Gustafsson

produced in collaboration with
internationalistisk Ideale and Elixia Vitalclub Mitte