Design Map · Eindhoven
The Solar War-Machine: Disassembling the Necro-Libidinal Infrastructures of Power. (I’ve dreamt of solarpunk erotica)
Graduation project by Adam Białek at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
‘The Solar War-Machine' examines the political economy of solar power as an entanglement of energy infrastructures, statecraft, desire and the body. Departing from the assumption that renewable energy systems are inherently emancipatory and constitute the solution to political and economic crises, the work interrogates how photovoltaic technologies remain embedded within the logics of the petro-economy, where energy functions as a geopolitical instrument of control. The work reconfigures the stage of a political forum. A choreography captured through infrared vision is registered by a system of solar panels, converting it into heat and releasing it into the exhibition space. As the installation gradually increases temperature, a thermal surveillance camera continuously monitors the system and its audience. Bodies, techno-political infrastructures and solar technology merge into the same thermodynamic assemblage. The work argues that energy infrastructures require a fundamental re-contextualisation of the conditions under which energy futures are imagined, organised and inhabited.