Talks
Vanina Saracino
Our Best Machines Are Made of Sunshine: Post-Carbon Imaginaries and the Solar Energy Transition
16 May 2025, 6pm
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In this talk, Vanina Saracino examines post-carbon imaginaries through the lens of art, focusing on the idea of human metabolic independence in the shift from fossil fuels to solar energy. By reframing technology as part of a shared ‘natureculture’ continuum, she asks how we might reconsider our relationship with energy—not as a purely technological challenge, but as a cultural, political, and ecological transformation. Drawing on curatorial methods, Saracino weaves connections between diverse artworks and ideas, using speculative thinking, situated knowledge, and storytelling to reimagine our entanglement with energy and the sun.
Vanina Saracino is an independent curator, film programmer, writer, and lecturer whose work focuses on art practices that challenge anthropocentric and binary worldviews, with a particular emphasis on lens-based and time-based media. Saracino has curated exhibitions internationally, including two editions of the Screen City Biennial: Other Minds (Berlin, 2022) and Ecologies – Lost, Found and Continued (Stavanger, 2019). Since 2021, Saracino has been a lecturer at the Universität der Künste (UdK) in Berlin.