Show pageOld revisionsBacklinksBack to top You've loaded an old revision of the document! If you save it, you will create a new version with this data. Media Files===== D&S concepts ==== A few notes about the themes, questions, hypotheses and methods behind Dust and Shadow. ==== Themes ==== **Desertification** * Everything shrivels up and erodes into dust; desertification related to ecology and culture (intergenerational memory) * Humans come and go * (Engineering) mistakes cause large scale ecological transformations **Probabilistic Future Preparedness** * Phoenix holding onto permanence * Civilisations with expiration dates (one moment or slow subsiding) * Prehearsals of obsolescence * Urban desert / urban wilderness **Attunement** * material wonder & wander * layered time, massive scale * beyond human relationships * solitude and indifference * (i)nertness * naming * conviviality with diverse entities, different lenses of interrelation **Zombie utopias** * Shadows * Ghost towns * Haunted utopias, vampiric utopias, parasitic utopias * Troubled past * Living but already dead (eg. Paradise City); planning for unsustainability ---- {{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/25203295168/ ?maxwidth=1000}}\\ ==== Core questions ==== **What are the (environmental) critical uncertainties in the region?** * What/how to extrapolate local conditions to other deserts and environments on their way to become deserts? **What does a thalient laboratory in the desert look like?** * How to translate animist attitudes into worldviews compatible with contemporary techno-materialist societies? * How to (re)animate pre-modern sensibilities without dualisms of light/dark, good/evil, love/power? * What arts, sciences and technologies become possible if we widen the 'sentience spectrum' and emphasize experience and interaction with diverse beings? * Should we refrain from speech and use the visceral language of experience? * How do we speak of relations as well as things? **What might urban futures in the American South West look like?** * How to turn or move from zombie/vampiric utopias to regenerative ('log') eutopias? * What would a banishing ritual for haunted utopias be like? * Why attempt to build cities in the desert? * What would a pre-enactment for futures of Phoenix look like? ---- {{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/38188527365/in/album-72157681429258454/ ?maxwidth=1000}}\\ ==== Hypotheses ==== **We can adapt or mitigate climate chaos (etc.) by changing mindset/worldview and their underlying myths.** * Art can initiate, amplify or test this change. * We can draw inspiration from animism, panpsychism, shinto, shamanism, etc. * Any technological solutions will be perverted by existing dominant ideologies (and vice versa) * Myth-making and reactivating myths can animate inert geological and architectural markers * We need a new form of geomancy * There are sacred refugia and wild sanctuaries to uncover (explore/preserve) **We can become human receptors and listening devices** * We practice the craft of silence and heterogeneous hearing to help us attune to our surroundings. * At all times there are other beings listening. We can hear each other if we pay attention. * We tread lightly seeing with new eyes. We witness and weave threads of connection with other people and places (FoAM) * Our language can liquefy * We communicate to connect, not dissect **The desert invites unencumbered experimentation, yet the desert is also unforgiving** * It is possible to thrive in uncertainty * Objectives obscure progress * We should move from social contracts to natural contracts * It is possible to transform zombie utopias into fertile compost for new eutopias * Neo-reaction and new age are each other's flip-sides, collapsing complexity of uncertainty into platitudes ---- {{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/39039008492/in/album-72157681429258454/ ?maxwidth=1000}}\\ ==== Methods ==== ... vaporous thoughts condensed into propositions, commonplaces and fieldguides, by: * seeing, listening, tasting, smelling, experiencing (sensing & activating) * walking * fieldwork * inquiry (critical, embodied...) * experiential futures and speculative design * action research * contemporary rituals and peak experiences * contemplative practices and attunement * writing ---- {{>http://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/35016379345/in/album-72157681429258454/ ?maxwidth=1000}}\\ Please fill all the letters into the box to prove you're human. Please keep this field empty: SavePreviewCancel Edit summary Note: By editing this page you agree to license your content under the following license: CC Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International dust_and_shadow/concepts.1567157431.txt.gz Last modified: 2019-08-30 09:30by maja
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