Timo Peach meets artists, solarpunks and changemakers re-imagining the stories we think we're in.
In the first of this ten-part series, Momo meets writer, theorist and strategist currently specialising in the distributed web and world running.
Co-founder of solarpunks.net he’s been a central figure in the solarpunk movement for most of it’s existence. He’s also the maker of 301 Permanently Moved podcast and host of Come Internet With Me.
“We have access to an abundance of independently created art from all over the world. And yet the kinds of movies being made, and the types of stories that are getting told seem to be totally unoriginal, regurgitated or rebooted.”
“Solarpunk in some sense is an invitation for people to start to begin to think about the future in new ways. People re posting things and saying: “is this Solarpunk?” And placing it in the container. What it tries to do is not to think about the world in a utopian way bit to gather the practical things that exist or have been overlooked and project them outwards.”
Hybrid environments – techno social spaces – “the way they are understood is narratively. You begin to write a story about what goes into that container or what the container is.”
“You can’t LARP Solarpunk because Solarpunk is planting a seed tray.”
“There are two types of power. There’s electrical power there’s power in a Fuko sense of who has it and who gets to use it on others. So attempts to create a distributed grid which is what renewables promise means it is also a fulcrum to begin to think about the redistribution of power in society.”
Solarpunk is a generous mimetic engine – it gives more ideas back than you put in.”
He suggested to Jay that Solarpunk began as a container. That the idea of it came first and people filled it in with stories. Normally in a movement the stories come first – the founding mega texts.
Geoff Lawton.
Founding figure in permaculture – video introduction:
Founded by author Neal Stephenson to explore the role of science fiction in innovation, as part of Arizona State Uni ’s Centre for science and the imagination.