Transcriber: Georges Pattinson Reviewer: Remco Mollema
What happens when electricity is gone?
Now, you all seat here in a theater.
It is a space which is arranged.
There is light. There is sound.
There is everything that suits you
to be comfortable to watch the show.
Probably most of you have
a mobile phone in their pockets.
With normal mobile phones today,
at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon
you have to start looking for sockets,
you know "Where can I charge my phone,
because it's empty?"
So we are surrounded with electricity
everywhere we are.
If you want to say it like this,
it is the foundation of society
as we know it today.
And the interesting is
if you start thinking about electricity
you know what it is,
you suddenly realize
the more you think about it,
the less you really know.
I have a professional background
as an artist.
I have been working
all my professional life
with a lot of machinery,
with computers,
with everything, with lights,
everything I am using has electricity
and at some point,
I set back and I asked myself
where does electricity come from?
What is this strange thing?
As I started to think about it.
And indeed
the more you think about it,
the less you know.
So you remember from school time:
there is plus, there is minus
and there are electrons wandering around
and this is basically it.
You sort of losing it you know,
you don't know what it is in the end.
How come I know so few things
about this natural phenomena
that is the basic of life in itself?
When you do this,
you are using electricity.
You body works with electricity.
And how come I don't know such a lot,
and I thought,
What was the first thing
when I got to know about electricity?
We all know,
the first impression
you get from something
when you meet something new,
being somebody or something
you know, the first 10 seconds
are when you decide
if you like it or if you don't like it.
Remember what was the first thing
I learnt about electricity.
It was fear.
Somebody was telling
when you were a child.
Don't put your fingers
into the socket or you will die!
That was basically what you grew up with,
for a couple of years.
Every time you had
something with electricity,
someone was telling you
Oh! Don't touch it...
it might be dangerous, you know...
There is this lurking force in the wall,
you can't see it,
you can't touch it,
you can't feel it,
don't touch it!
It's dangerous... Stay away!
That's a bit awkward if you want to
have a positive relationship
with something.
You grow up
you know things about electric chair.
Zeus throwing down lighting
that strikes people.
All sorts of different things
happening to you,
this wasn't always the case.
In the beginning in the 18th century,
when people sort of developed things
that tried to tackle electricity,
when it was all new people
like to play around like children
who discover something new.
That was one of the first experiments
where they put a woman on a pedestal
and they charged her with small amounts
of static electricity
when she kissed somebody
there were small sparks flying.
Which is quite the opposite of fear
it is something nice, something positive,
something you want to do.
There were people travelling around
they were something called "electrifiers."
They were somewhere between
magicians and scientists
they travel from village to village
and did experiments like this,
trying to engage
and involve people into electricity.
So when I had my moment of enlightenment
it was on one of those festivals
who see there,
that is the Wacker Open Air festival,
it is a heavy metal festival in Germany.
Approximately over 80,000 people
go there every year.
Quite some of them have long hair
and quite funny beards
and they listen to music.
So in a way
it is the land of milk and honey.
You go there you have music,
you have friends, you have sound,
you have everything is there
and you just feel good for a couple of days.
And they are actually building
whole cities for 80,000 people
right in the middle of nowhere.
And this is actually quite an old picture,
so today if you are standing
in front of a stage
you don't see so much of the stage,
you see everybody holding
his or her mobile phone
trying to record
what's happening on stage.
I don't know who is ever going to look
at all these videos,
it probably means
that every concert you are at,
you can watch from a thousands
of perspectives later on
and spend the rest of your life
just watching one concert.
But still you on the festival
you are using your mobile phone
all the time,
and probably with
today's actual smartphones
after day 2 you meet the icon of doom,
which is this:
It happens you are
in the middle of civilization
on a music festival and suddenly
your smartphone is empty.
What do you do?
You actually start looking for a socket.
It is easy when you are at home,
it is easy when you are at a hotel.
If you are on a music festival
with 200,000 other visitors,
there is no public infrastructure
that allows you to charge your phone.
So you are running around
like an electric nomad
trying to find a socket,
where is the next socket
having your mobile phone
and your adapter
and there is none.
The socket actually becomes
the Holy Grail.
Everybody is wondering around
trying to plug themselves into
whatever is installed there.
You start making promises
to the god who know:
"Give me power and I will stop smoking,
just charge my mobile phone
please I'll do everything."
And I had a vision.
When I was standing on that festival,
I had a vision.
I was thinking about Zeus
and his chariot running across the sky.
Looking down at people
and sometimes smiting them with lighting.
And I thought what he need it something
to travel from this big event
from one to the next,
like the electrifiers did
in the 18th century
generate electricity onsite
and charge mobile phones.
So I got together a team
of electricians, technicians,
even I am an artist
I have no idea about technology.
So got a very precise team
of professionals on board
and we built this,
this is a bit like a chariot,
this is actually what it looks like
when we are travelling around.
When you actually put it out,
it looks like this.
That is the Electric Hotel.
It is a converted 1960's Airstream Trailer,
an oldie if you want to put it like this,
highly polished
and it generates electricity
by means of wind, solar power
and we have a small little water turbine,
and we charge electric devices
on these festivals.
So who would come here
like you would check in at the hotel,
only you don't check in yourself
but check in your mobile phone
or whatever you have,
you would be amazed what people
carry on to these festivals.
You just check it in
come back 2 hours later
and it is charged just by renewable energy.
And there is a bit more.
Well what interest me
it is not really charging the phones,
it is trying to raise
awareness about electricity.
So we constructed
something like a flying circus.
We have lots of modules
where people can generate
they own electricity.
They can sit on bikes and just pedal on,
they can pump water
in a big water pumping stations
and we have other devices
that allow people
to get into touch electricity,
get involved just like the child,
children start playing with it
and do something nice with it.
And I like to invite you and follow me
to the Shabolah Festival
where we went last year
and have a quick look
at what it looks like in reality.
So we are replacing fear with fun.
People actually start getting
interested into what this is.
They start to ask questions:
how much is 10 watts,
how much is a 100 watts
How come I can maybe charge my phone
with one of those bikes?
But can't charge a hairdryer
or whatever uses a huge
amount of electricity.
So you are engaging them
but not with a raised moral finger.
You don't go around telling people
what to do and what not to do
just by engaging them
and involving them
with something that is nice.
And reaching them on a very different level,
and this is all about
being happiness and business.
And engaging them into something
that is useful to them
and charging a mobile phone
in a place where there is nothing else
is obviously quite useful to them.
So when we travel on the festivals
we turning back
this land of milk and honey
which became a desert
if you are looking for power.
We are suddenly returning it
to the land of milk and honey
and it means that just by being there
and by charging phones
we are trying to get the message across,
go home
and think a little bit about electricity
because it is really worthwhile.
And if you carry on thinking it
there is places like music festivals,
this is the Glastonbury Festival,
big festival in the UK.
There is other places on this planet
where the difference between
having no electricity
and having small amounts of electricity
which is quite easy to gather on a bike
or small other things like
thing about disaster relief camps,
thing about other places
where the amount of electricity
that is needed is not a lot.
But the actual means of getting it there
is not an easy task,
it is just referring by using muscle power
makes all the difference.
Watts up when there is no electricity.
Thank you.