The ‘The Animals’ Lawsuit Against Humanity’ is one of my favourite and most inspiring tales. It was lovely to have Animal Think Tank’s SXSW panel about a MultiSpecies city juxtapositioned with it in your article.
Subcultures are critical infrastructure for imagining, rehearsing and prefiguring visions of a future, better society that all successful movements have relied on.
Sanctuaries do this work, and artistic communities have always done it, and then brought it to the public. We need more!
Thanks Mark. Absolutely. Arten Festival in Zurich married both sanctuary and artistic practice beautifully this summer, performing a true practising utopia; growing culture in an exciting and invigorating way.
Re-reading your article has made me think three things (for now):
- that performance doesn’t have to be exclusive to the arts and cultural sector. I hadn’t realised it, but yes, prepping for SXSW was like crafting performance: thinking audience; what we wanted them to feel, imagine and take away; crafting a storyline; and the outcome being audience members who took the conversation beyond the room.
- that helping people ‘imagine’ a future possibility could perhaps be a core tenant of the movement’s comms. More persuasive and strategic than our current persuasion methods perhaps.
- that we don’t need a nailed down design of the future vision yet. We’re very conscious at Animal Think Tank that we communicate the nightmare of today much more than we share the vision of tomorrow. Designing that future is a big undertaking, but imagining it in different forms and different ways can be done right now and is probably all we need for now. A bottom up vision stitched together from a myriad of sources.
The ‘The Animals’ Lawsuit Against Humanity’ is one of my favourite and most inspiring tales. It was lovely to have Animal Think Tank’s SXSW panel about a MultiSpecies city juxtapositioned with it in your article.
Subcultures are critical infrastructure for imagining, rehearsing and prefiguring visions of a future, better society that all successful movements have relied on.
Sanctuaries do this work, and artistic communities have always done it, and then brought it to the public. We need more!
Thanks Mark. Absolutely. Arten Festival in Zurich married both sanctuary and artistic practice beautifully this summer, performing a true practising utopia; growing culture in an exciting and invigorating way.
Re-reading your article has made me think three things (for now):
- that performance doesn’t have to be exclusive to the arts and cultural sector. I hadn’t realised it, but yes, prepping for SXSW was like crafting performance: thinking audience; what we wanted them to feel, imagine and take away; crafting a storyline; and the outcome being audience members who took the conversation beyond the room.
- that helping people ‘imagine’ a future possibility could perhaps be a core tenant of the movement’s comms. More persuasive and strategic than our current persuasion methods perhaps.
- that we don’t need a nailed down design of the future vision yet. We’re very conscious at Animal Think Tank that we communicate the nightmare of today much more than we share the vision of tomorrow. Designing that future is a big undertaking, but imagining it in different forms and different ways can be done right now and is probably all we need for now. A bottom up vision stitched together from a myriad of sources.
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