“This is how I was born, how my creator, Victor Frankenstein, sparked me into energetic life…” So began my performance-paper at 4S 2015 (Society for Social Studies of Science) and AAA 2015 (American Anthropological Association) in Denver.
I performed a character who haunts the islands of Orkney, abandoned out of hubris after her creation by Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s novel. This figure speaks of her implacable resistance to hubris–so prevalent in the usual centres of innovation– and how the islands of Orkney have been creating a new energy future without hubris… for Orkney and its landscape has its own particular temporality, and a self-determination that does not give in to hope, and expect some higher power to step in to resolve its energy issues. Instead, it acts in defiance of its absurd limitations…