Banality

“You will be able to swim in the lake after 10 years,” says Steffen, our tour guide from Cottbus’s City Planning Department. Plans are in place to develop three more artificial lakes east of the Cottbuser Ostsee, following the closure of the Jänschwalde mine. This repetitive obsession with repurposing disused open mine pits into idyllic lakes for recreational tourism is particularly captivating, as it captures our fascination with both romanticized nature and technological utopianism.

This approach, while conceived as a new landscape technology based on civil engineering and water management, has a long history. The idea of an idyllic lake for swimming and sailing, first proposed by German landscape architect, Otto Rindt, who played a key role in the design of Senftenberger See since the 1970s during the GDR era, was revisited over 50 years later, reappearing in the conception of the Cottbuser Ostsee.

The change from lignite to renewable energy sources further complicates the aesthetic picture. The proliferation of large-scale solar parks and wind turbines in former mining areas signifies the tangible transformation. However, a critical question arises: how do these aesthetics align with our socio-technical imaginaries of a sustainable future? A key argument here is the prevalence of an aesthetics of banality in these interventions. Banality, here, refers to a combination of unoriginality and the mundane. It manifests as the adoption of readily available, easily communicable solutions that can be applied repetitively, prioritizing efficiency over novelty. This paradoxical pursuit of efficiency-driven, unoriginal solutions stems from the need to optimize time and cost. The question then becomes: how does this banality become aesthetically prevailing?

Let’s look at two more examples: LEAG, an energy enterprise controlled by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky and the sole energy supplier in Lusatia, has embarked on the ‘Gigawatt-Factory’ project. Inspired by Elon Musk’s Gigafactories, this initiative combines new types of renewable energy such as solar, wind power, and hydrogen. Part of the project is located on an abandoned military airfield in Welzow, where its runway is transformed into a vast array of photovoltaic panels – a vast, no-man’s land of solar energy.

Similarly, Heliatek, a German renewable energy startup, has developed a new carbon-based chemical technology that converts light into energy. This technology has found an application in the production of bendable solar panels that can be formed into modular patterns on building facades. Despite the technological capacity to produce transparent solar panels that resemble normal glass, the product retains the dark color commonly seen in conventional panels due to its efficiency-focused design and “greenwashing” potential.

These examples, consisting of landscape and infrastructural transformations that are designed to be seen, prompt us to think critically about the (in)visibility of energy infrastructure and the aesthetics of energy transformation. They reflect an aesthetic characterized by two elements: First, a sense of familiarity, a commonplace quality that dulls the senses and hides the wonder of enchantment. Second, an employment of predictable repetitions – a reuse of existing knowledge. This results in an effect of “futuristic anemoia,” a nostalgic longing for a restored landscape built on an invented past.

In short, the paradox at the heart of the energy transition is this: technological innovation promises to transform and replace mining-related technology, creating different “atmospheres,” as Gernot Böhme suggests. However, these “atmospheres” often favor readily available solutions – an aesthetic of banality warped by oblivion, vague memory, and technofixes, creating an utopian view of a sustainable future that has not fully existed, and perhaps never will. This analysis calls for a critical examination of the aesthetics of the energy transition. By understanding these contradictions, we can strive to envision a sustainable future beyond banality, embracing scientific knowledge and engaging both aesthetic appreciation and connections to the land and water.