Red Energy

Together with two fellow classmates we created an installation called 'Red Energy'. The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the challenges of social injustice and our personal relationships. Psychologists strongly advise to express one's anger as it has many benefits to avoid repressed emotions. The installation gives the opportunity to open yourself up and letting go of our anger. To let the anger go away, people can hit with a hammer as hard and long as someone wants. The pressure is applied to the whacked crystal material, electric charges are generated proportional to the friction applied. This is stored in a battery and is later used to light up a miniature city or charge your phone. So, the red energy is converted into green energy. Taking better care of ourselves by starting with letting go of our anger, will follow by taking better care of the world through generating sustainable energy.

Furthermore, we as creative researchers, exploit this project as a survey to find out what people are really angry about. During our exposition in Van der Werfpark Leiden, 16 participants interacted with our project (11 male and 5 females). Participants mentioned different reasons where they were angry about, most of the participants had a personal reason and didn’t choose one of the two default reasons to be angry about (COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter). All our participants were enthusiastic about the project and had a positive experience. Some participants even mentioned that their mind condition improved.

This project was carried out together with Daphne Wong-A-Foe and Peng Song.