The Moving Energy Theatre. Photo: Deep Time Agency & John Coutts

This work was developed within Deep Time Agency and in collaboration with curator Anna Tudos. 

Team: Deep Time Agency & Anna Tudos, Marcus Nicolson (assistance), John Coutts (photography), Daniel Shailer (reporting & interviewing)

Thanks to Gaada, Shetland Museum & Archives, the Up Helly Aa Committee, Jon Pulley, Gilly Bridle & Sew Far North.


     

(2025) Performative Intervention, Photography, Publication (forthcoming)

The Shetland Islands are a Scottish archipelago that lies approximately 480 kilometres north of Edinburgh and 320 kilometres west of Bergen, on the crossroads between Norway, Scotland, and the Faroe Islands. Shetland houses Sullom Voe, one of the biggest oil terminals in Europe. During peak times, up to 1.5 million barrels of oil enter the archipelago daily from the oil platforms in the North Sea to be stored in underground containers. Afterwards, they are shipped to ports worldwide. The archipelago is also a major player in wind and tidal energy.

Some of the energy industry’s traces are more visible than others for the 23,000 inhabitants living there. The ways these industries have changed island life and natural environments throughout history are often discussed, performed, and criticized by members of the Shetland community. An example are the short theatre acts that happen in the framework of the carnivalesque Up Helly Aa festival. A handful of historical acts from between 1972 and 2003 found in the Shetland Archives and the Up Helly Aa Committee Archive reference the energy industry through a critical lens and a specific aesthetic, marked by costumes, props, songs, and so on.

In light of the opening of the new Rosebank oil field north-west of Shetland (planned to start operating in 2026), it is time again for these discourses to re-emerge. TMET uses re-enactment and performative intervention to bring back and revive 8 selected energy acts from the archives. For this purpose costumes and props were recreated and placed back into the industrial environments the acts discussed and critiqued once, letting interactions around them unfold spontaneously. In this way, the costumes become tools for conversations around energy, that allow for contemporary discussion about what roles these industries play in the Shetlanders’ lives today.