WIND WORKS 11/07/07

Words :: Jeff Kubik // Images :: Jamie Janos, Ellen Wexler

Any Calgarian taking a road trip to Waterton National Park by way of the number two highway has seen the wind turbines – monolithic, brilliant, white spinning in rows that stretch across the foothills. These clusters’ sharply modern appearance is as evocative as their name: wind farms – an odd juxtaposition between Alberta’s familiar agricultural history and the striking modernity of alternative power sources.
But if the contrast between the landscape and these turbines is striking, then it’s just as important to note that Alberta, with its deep roots in conventional fossil fuels, has had unique run-ins with wind power, notably brought to the fore because of government restriction.
Almost a year after the Albertan government set a 900-megawatt “threshold” for wind production, suggesting that uneven power generation could destabilize the power grid, Alberta Energy Minister Mel Knight reignited the controversy by suggesting that the cap might be increased on an interim basis.
Interestingly, the cap was instead lifted this past September.
But while Alberta’s exponential growth continues to find fuel in its booming and environmentally controversial energy economy, one American city is using the wind turbine in an unexpected capacity. In Cleveland, the iconography of the wind turbine is becoming as much environmental discussion as public art.
Completed in June 2007, WindWorks is a unique combination of function, art, and education – a functional wind turbine situated in front of the lakefront Great Lakes Science Center, which commissioned the work in partnership with Cleveland Public Art. Surrounded by pathways representing the shadows cast by the turbine at various points in the day, as well as a sculpture created by casting 4,440 100-watt light bulbs and their corrugated cardboard boxes in concrete (enough to represent the average American household’s annual electrical consumption), the project was the result of an open competition seeking to add an artistic component to the Science Center’s existing turbine.
After producing a similar project in Hannover, Germany – an area whose own former reliance on fossil fuel is reflected in the coal-based “shadows” that accent the piece – New York-based Alex and Ellen Wexler won Cleveland Public Art’s national call for artists in 2005.
For Ellen Wexler, the project represents a chance to use a fundamentally functional object to draw attention to its own unique beauty. “It’s actually an exquisite looking object, quite majestic when it moves,” she says of the turbine. “And one of the better ways to do that is look at this ground shapes they’re casting as a path. It brings your eyes up to say: ‘What is this?’”
It’s a way of drawing observers’ attentions that’s also intrinsically environmental. By drawing attention to mechanisms like the turbine, or to familiar shapes like light bulbs, museum patrons are invited to consider the source and cost of their familiar conveniences.
“It is about looking at the form being beautiful, and realizing that it was producing energy for your home,” says Ellen. “Having this picture of it going into your house, being your reading lamp at night. People kind of forget where things come from.”
That relationship between people and their environment is of the utmost importance to Greg Peckham, executive director of the non-profit Cleveland Public Art organization. While Calgary’s energy industry is burgeoning, drawing its fuel from one of the most traditional and ecologically detrimental sources, Cleveland is currently home to just under half a million, almost a third of its original capacity.
While Calgary is searching for ways to stem or at least manage the tide of new development, notes Peckham, Cleveland is using initiatives like WindWorks to redefine itself – attracting new citizens and encouraging a new kind of community integration based on an understanding of the urban environment.
“We’re latching on and repositioning the city in terms of being more thoughtful about this issue [of our environment],” says Peckham. “We’re not dealing with a massive influx of people trying to live in the centre of the city; everything is completely the opposite. So there is room for ideas of sustainability and environmental sustainability to be higher on the agenda.”
In a climate where Alberta’s own energy concerns still engender ambivalence to greener power, it’s certainly a model worth considering. After all, Alberta already has the turbines.

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