GUILTY PLEASURES

In his new choreographic work, Romuald Krężel merges two areas of his previous artistic and research practices: ecological and class discourse. “Guilty Pleasures” takes a critical look at climate politics strategies of recent decades, like carbon guilt and flight shame, that are navigated through affective dimensions of guilt and pleasure. Confronting them with the usually overlooked perspectives and needs of the working class, especially those employed in the energy sector, this work searches for common ground in which a climate movement for the many can take root.

In “Guilty Pleasures”, the politics of energy is confronted with its poetics. Channeled through electric guitars, energy becomes a material presence that prompts the questions: Where does power come from? The power that keeps our lights on? The power to change our systems?

The creation of “Guilty Pleasures” concludes Romuald Krężel’s artistic research project Ecological Proletariat. In its framework, artist investigated the intersections of ecological and class discourses in the context of performing arts. The theoretical basis for the research was Mathew T. Huber’s book “Climate Change as Class War”, an in- depth analysis of the climate crisis from the perspective of class struggle. Krężel and his collaborators focused on the energy sector, which is of greatest importance to the ecological movement. They explored notions of energy and power, understood at the physical, performative and political levels. A series of interviews was conducted with the workers from the Berlin energy sector: power plants engineers and grid operators. The conversations concerned the conditions of work, class backgrounds, environmental politics and the unions. Not only did they provide the theoretical basis for the creation of the work, but they also inspired the artists to write the lyrics for the songs that are part of the performance.