Lorena Bassi

Hydroelectric Imaginaries

From the beginning of the 20th century onwards, Switzerland’s resources of water, mountains and money lead (hydro)electrical production to become part of the national myth. Over decades, the hydroelectric power plants with all their connected dams, tunnels, houses, and machines made hydroelectricity something omnipresent in the whole Alpine region. As highly engineered systems they influence large parts of today’s landscape. Lake levels fluctuate, rivers carry less water. Like an intricate nervous system, the electrical grid connects the places of hydro-electrical production to the places of consumption. Still, the scattering of productive infrastructures over the Swiss landscape and over national borders leads to a disconnect between producer and consumer. The turbinated water is bound to a capitalist market logic and problems are solved with new technologies, creating an even more complex system of global dependencies.

This hydroelectric imaginary is seeing crisis as a chance for an alternative hydroelectric future. To counter the abstraction of the techno-heroic, mutual influences between humans and bodies of water, electricity and the grid have to be acknowledged. Proximity means responsibility and responsibility is proximity: the characters of electrical production have to receive a bodily presence in the city. 13 towers in Zurich, each connected to an existing substation of the grid, act as storage for electricity. Linked to the grid, they are able to sense instabilities and can counter them by producing and feeding energy into the system. They act like clocks or lighthouses, revealing a rhythm of consumption and production. On the other end of the line sit two reservoirs, whose capacity for storage they are mirroring.