Terraforming EarthTerraforming Earth

At Terraforming Earth Jaya Klara Brekke and Jay Springett will discuss the potential of blockchain technology and decentralised renewable energy, as the possible basis for the development of a parallel, alternative economic logic, the primary prerequisite for maintaining and redeveloping the habitability of Earth.

Terraforming Earth kicks off a series of lectures and design labs about twenty-first-century society entitled Terraforming Earth. The premise 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. An important complicating factor in this scenario is that the feasibility of new systems is always first tested in the 'market', while the way the 'market' is organised is responsible for the succession of crises currently affecting planet Earth.

Jaya Klara Brekke is a British artist and researcher, currently working on a PhD on the political construction of blockchain applications. She will discuss attempts to programme utopian organisational forms in the blockchain and other political projections. Could blockchains play a role in the maintenance of 'the commons' and strengthen the positions of vulnerable human and non-human players in society?

Jay Springett is a writer, theorist, promoter of DIY culture and editor of Solarpunks. Solarpunk is a subgenre of science fiction premised on the separation of economies from fossil fuels. Solarpunk explores what free energy sources and decentralised energy infrastructure could mean for future society.

Before Thursday Night Live! at 18.30 Gerrit Jan van 't Veen from Border Sessions will give a brief introduction to the Border Sessions programme, featuring the second Terraforming Earth Lab on 13 June 2018. At 18.45 Jarl Schulp will present this year's FIBER events in Amsterdam, including the third Terraforming Earth Lab - on Worldbuilding on 28 September 2018.

Before Thursday Night Live! you can grab a bite to eat with the speakers and staff of Het Nieuwe Instituut. At 18:00 Het Nieuwe Café will serve soup with bread or a quiche with salad. Dinner vouchers are available for ¬ 7.50 up to a day before the particular Thursday Night event via the Tickets link.