Revolutions: the Lighthouse & the Windmill
Adam Sébire

Revolutions is a call to contemplate. We encounter it within this Screening Room as a ground level technology and a symbol of our changing landscapes. In searching for aesthetic representations of the energy transition, artist Adam Sébire was drawn, moth-like, to the enormous Class 1 fresnel lantern of Utsira Lighthouse (where he was to be marooned for three months due to the pandemic). Since 2019, Utsira Lighthouse has been powered by two wind turbines at the other end of this tiny North Sea island. This ostensibly obsolete Industrial Revolution technology starts turning each day as the sun sets. A cable connects to its eastern shore where, a few metres past the island’s 9000 year-old Stone Age ruins, two windmills also turn; pivotal technologies to guarantee the islanders’ resilience (ten Utsira households became the world’s first to have electricity produced from hydrogen in 2004, electrolysed by this wind energy).

The lighthouse’s beacon, once oil-powered, is also now lit and rotated by these turbines. Here is the artist’s first attempt at linking them formalistically. Revolutionary in more ways than one, connections between the two wind turbines and lighthouse exist on levels beyond the purely electromagnetic. They are linked: symbolically (windmills and lighthouses as Romantic-era icons); formally (both are vertical structures facilitating revolution); sociologically (energy and marine safety being fundamental to the community’s resilience); and technologically (transforming and manifesting wind energy as far-reaching 1000W beams of light).

“Lighthouses are held up by philosophers such as Rousseau as examples of a ‘Common Good’ – a free service provided for the benefit of all. Might renewable energy be considered in the same way?” the artist muses. “Though windmills draw on the Commons (via air currents) they can arouse strong passions politically and aesthetically (just ask Don Quixote!) By linking these turbines directly to this icon of the Industrial Revolution, I want to open up alternative aesthetic lines of thought about the technologies underpinning our current energy transition.”

The film is a form of reflection, without drawing conclusions. “Aesthetically, kaleidoscopically, the revolutions atop these two vertical structures merge in the video as aerodynamic turbine blades are juxtaposed with beams of light filmed from a drone. It’s these 1000W beams that offer a visible manifestation of renewable energy’s potential as small communities such as Utsira seek to close the gap between the generation and use of electricity. Perhaps it’s this same proximity of energy production and consumption that explains why renewables can become so controversial? The infrastructure of power generation is often hidden, especially when we are dealing with distant fossil-fuelled power plants. But our encounters with solar and wind installations are more distributed; hence we need to think deeply about their aesthetics.”