Terraforming Earth Talks Terraforming Earth Talks

The premise of the Terrafroming Earth programme is that political and economic systems should be conceived and designed in a radically different way in order to create an environment for a society of plants, animals, people and machines to sustain itself and to thrive. A first major hurdle to this development is the widespread, almost metaphysical conviction labelled 'capitalist realism' by Mark Fisher, summarized in the statement: "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." Is there a plausible way to conceive of a parallel economic system not based on exploitation and extractivist practices?

In this context Jaya Klara Brekke unpacked current political imaginaries of blockchain applications and adjusted both unrealistic and politically awkward expectations of control of human behavior, thereby offering some criteria by which to judge in what situations blockchain applications may come in handy, and when they make things more complicated than necessary. Jay Springett explored the narrative strategies of solarpunk, that extrapolates today's questions in a similar fashion to how the cyberpunk movement extrapolated the questions of the 80ies, and laid out the strategic narrative of land-as-platform which grafts the organisational logic of the digital ecologies back onto living soil. Klaas Kuitenbrouwer provided an introduction. Listen to the talks and discussions below. Following the Terraforming Earth talks the first of the Terraforming Earth Labs, "Constitution of a 21st Century" took place.

Find more information on the outcomes of that Lab here.

The visuals that accompanied the three presentations can be downloaded below.