Earlier this month I spoke about the history and future of Solarpunk at Human Entities Conference in Lisbon – organised by CADA in partnership with the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon.
I think it’s one of my best talks and has some new thoughts and ideas in it.
I found myself bringing up the Heavy Weather that’s coming – and how it’s going to be shit. Given the growth in popularity and interest that Solarpunk has seen in the last year or so, I thought it important to say that things aren’t going to be great in the near future. Despite its optimism, Solarpunk doesn’t shy away or ignore this reality we are en route to a better world and its going to take dirt behind our ears to get there.
You watch a re-recording of the talk, or listen to the original recording below:
Solarpunk means dreaming green
Jay Springett
Strategist and writerSolarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?”
In our current age of popular dystopia, climate grief, and biosphere collapse, Solarpunk has become a ‘creative container‘ for more fertile futures. Not one future singular, but many. Solarpunk encourages everyone to re-imagine what life might be like en-route to a better world. Our collective future will not be imposed upon us from above, but instead created bottom up by individuals in polyphony. A texture consisting of multiple simultaneous lines of independent melody.
The future never passively arrives fully formed, instead, it must be dreamed. Solarpunk is one such dream. In this talk Jay will cover the story of how solarpunk came to be and its attempts at inspiring people to ‘remake our present and future history’.
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