Harvest from the Resilients workshop 2010
The purpose of Resilients
Why is the project “resilients” still important at this time in the world and for whom? If we are the Resilients, what will we do, how will we look, where will we be…?
- Resilients will help us prepare for unspeakable futures
- Resilients speak to novices and supports isolated change makers - cultural, scientific
- Resilients provide sparks for people in the everyday.
- With Resilients we diversify, strengthen and extend existing networks that are fragile, in order to enhance cultural resilience (across scales - individuals, organisations, wider cultural networks)
- Resilients foster life-enhancing and rebalancing of humans and the rest of the planet (resilience is invisible, and tested by time).
- Resilients use [intentional] story-telling to explore, communicate and develop presences/presents into potential futures of complete [social, environmental, personal, economic] ecologies
Resilients - Why & how
We first had a conversation about why Resilients is relevant, then split up in Open Space sessions to discuss possible tactics & strategies…
Connections
Finding, connecting and supporting existing fragile resilients (individuals, organisations, networks)
Buddha Hotel
participants: Trudo, Robert, Loes, Maja, Tim
Buddha hotel is a residency format for connection, network strengthening, travels, interaction Is the “normal” residency model still interesting??
What resilient residencies need: not boring, offer & demand, results, format [AIR BnB to fund a residency]
Interpenetrations
participants: Bart, Christina, Cocky, Theun, Loes, Andy, Robert, Lina
Making online lists per partner, about its expertises, future/current projects wishes etc. Internal open calls for competence pooling will pair up groups in concrete ideas/questions/problems to solve/ask in production/research contexts. Additional collaborative models are:
- format > localisation
- format > translation/adaptation
Invitation and initiation
participants: Andy, Pippa, Maja, Lina, Theun
pitch:
- enter public events that target all age groups (children, mid-adults, older people), though not all at the same time.
- there will be a core event guide (e.g. always food)
- local events always communicated to the mesh of all
- guests always “plug” the next event, meeting, workshop
- invite the guest to mailing lists (announce, discuss and wiki)
- regular meetups exploring EU partner topics, e.g. this month energy, food security
- TOPIC based “rabbitholes”, e.g. bees (bee exhibition, bee workshop, implement beekeeping knowledge, start a new hive, relocate, process honey for barter/sale)
Older people - seek them out; how are they/their projects resilient, how do they see today's challenges? Prepare for getting old - if we are lucky we get old, but how do we stay lucky when we are old?
Old, (not active) specialists: scientists, technologists, farmers, healers volunteering to give their knowledge, opinion, integrity, skills
Life-enhancing
Fostering Life-enhancing and rebalancing of humans & the rest of the planet
Technogaian - Design and Science
participants: Nik, Carole, Hendrik, Simone, Lina, Andy
Traditional craft/ contemporary craft/ science theory designers/philosophers/scientists/story tellers
- a series of workshops, residencies
- a design commission - how do you identify the problem form the perspective of both science and design. objective is to test the resilience of a system, i.e. what would you change about the transport system/living behaviours with climate change in different European countries?
- how do we fabricate in the future, looking at biological fabrication and how they can be applied?
- how do we live in the hotter future? do we introduce the siesta from Spain in Sweden?
Stories
Telling and embodying stories of complete ecologies (past - present - future)
Global Apocalypse Management Agency
participants: Dougald, Simone, Vinay, Theun, Nik
A game in which players start as an apprentice and learn, become journeymen by travelling across Europe to learn at centres of excellence and graduate as guild masters of resilience.
Unspeakable futures
How do we prepare for unspeakable futures?
Resilients as a Start-Up
participants: Vinay, Nik, Trudo, Andy, Tim, Dougald
- the resilients as a network of future re-enactment societies
- Dungeons and Dragons for resilience, ARG, Steampunk, theatrical co-product with existing networks, use organic farms
- revenue through training for game masters?
- burning man
- Etsy as an inspiration - profitable for good relationship with users, part of the same scene
festivals 4 times a year
Resilients branches
From various discussions and sessions we have distilled the following
Structure:
- Guild: The public body of Resilients in a dynamic structure of apprentices, journeyers & masters, based on a charter for involvement
- Transgenerational Integration: all Resilients activities should be transgenerational
Content:
- Games and Narratives: telling & embodying stories of Resilients
- Pilgrimage: travel between centres of resilience; pollination and diffusion
- Alchemy and Craft Nouveau: fusing traditional crafts & new technologies
- MetroBioPolis: edible cities, livable cities - resilient cities
- Village: a self sufficient, resilients village built from the bottom up
- Holistic Culture and Climate Change - long term behavioural & cultural changes as a response to climate change
Support activities
- Tactics and Strategy
- Documentation and Dissemination
Resilients branches in detail
Tactics & strategy
- robust online collaboration infrastructure
- threat models
- mapping / scenarios
- unholy alliances (green gold + radical environmentalists, climate modellers + spiritual leaders…)
- other funding models (venture capital, angel investors…)
- quadricopter sensing
Documentation & dissemination
- different levels of entry for the public
- resilience handbook (across scales: individual -world/nature)
- communication in & out
- archive → book (harvest, the wiki, booksprints)
- instant, playful documenting
- mobile publishing
- messages for now & the future
- notation (data ecologies 2011)
- resilience course on a project/organisational level (f2f & p2pu)
- resilience coaching (f2f dissemination to potential apprentices)
initial notes for documentation
Transgenerational integration
- residencies
- herbal grannies
- old resilient specialists as guild leaders
- trans-generational family life
Guild
- randomness
- speculative (non)fiction & comics
- ARGs as entry-ways to guild & activities
- guild: apprentice, journeyer, master
- future reenactment society
- resilience superpowers & superheroes
- dinners
- parallel presents
- invitation & initiation (getting new people in)
- rituals
Games & narratives
- speculative fiction
- physical narration
- future prehearsals (NNNI)
- storytelling & folk-tales (pass the parcel) from town to town
- poetry readings
- experimental semiotics
- narrative strategies
- dye powered imagery
Holistic cultures & climate change
- biomimetics at social/cultural level
- design + philosophy + science
- collaboration hard science & the arts
- climate change impact on cultural change: Stockholm siesta syndrome (what comes out of behaviour change, richer/different quality of life, reduced energy use, different consumption)
- climate change impact on vegetation: Copenhagen cactus; mapping software for changes in plant growth, seed & skill swapping
Alchemy & craft nouveau
- Craft + Science + Design = Alchemy → Chemistry → Alchemy
- biomimetic craft
- mix CAD/CAM & traditional crafts
- future of fabrication: biomimicry & synthetic biology
- electric glass, moving images with reflected light
- self powered animations in broad daylight
- kinetic icons
- craft as an emotional carrier of cultural values
- data-mining history - living examples
- guilds, unions, art movements, TAZs, etc.
- textile habitats for bees
- KJ ~ KW (body & energy) - food & the kitchen + rituals, seasons & energy production, consumption & cultural values
- metabolism
- media enchanted trinkets
Village
- a field
- homes
- food & food systems
- a village: cheap modules & a shared lab
- shops & empty shops
- the resilient family
- the resilient child
- module for life: cheap & easy house & work (self sufficient)
- home brew resilience club
- civil emergency
- convertible community
- trade/exchange
- marketplace
Metrobiopolis
- manifesto research
- tracks of disciplinary workshops
- Dock Berlin - workshops, residencies & network in/around Berlin
- green rivers for bees
- bees as monitors
- mobile apps for growers
- workshop apps
- meetups with themes: city, augmented ecology
- urban agriculture
- urban garden networks
- juices in town
- gardeners in residence
- AGRO culture
- plants tell us stories: plant poetry rituals
- lazy gardening techniques
Pilgrimage (Pellegrinage)
- a journey around Resilients network (do!!!, skills, connect, people on bikes)
- trace travel
- learning journeys (photo & video capturing of stories & resilient practices)
- decorated bikes & trucks (electric / solar)
- flow expeditions
What is the lasting thing?
- people having a sense of belonging to the resilience (through play, rituals…)
- big installation art, spark of mechanical engineering madness
- small installations, putting stories into the physical narrative arena, to work & play with what futures coulc come, show positive ways & tactics
- transgenerational integration
- how to learn from each other
- documentation
- a structure: decrease focus on content
- the guild is the grandma of the narrative
- resilience guild
- satellite guilds
- human factor as a focus
- stories, tactics to get a real craft nouveau
- collaboration is the most important. everything is carries by the structure
- stories & products
- metrobiopolis & its documentation
- linking - whatever we produce - links will last
- Are we effective - lots of stuff, but what's the most effective (measured by flow between all the nodes)?
- Who takes responsibility for collaboration?
- Connect resilient people through stories…
- Stories help us to talk about things without having to make them work
- membership numbers
- link guild & transgenerational integration, connect through strategy, stories & alchemy
- physical narrative to recharge our physical spaces with new narrative, localised spaces or travelling objects
- making connections & play, work out of your own field
- real collaboration, transgenerational & metrobiopolis at the centre
- Life enchanting, supporting & preparing, storytelling & tryouts
- could guild activities be self supporting, apprenticeships & harvesting documentation?
What do we want to do?
- We're motivated but a motivation boost by the EC funding would be great
- The project will take form of available funding - shapeshifting
- What are our success criteria? How will we measure whether we succeeded?
- Long term project could be a resilience guild + satellite projects
Guild includes apprentices, journeyers & masters, connections to old & new guilds, as well as groups who could/should be guilds (i.e. webcraft).
Satellite projects discussed are:
- village + metrobiopolis
- physical narrative
- edible landscape (craft nouveau, biomimicry…)
- bumblebees (pilgrimage)
Both guild & satellites require utility functions:
- collaboration tools, playful documentation
- tactics & strategy
- dissemination
- all projects transgenerational
Proposed EC project partners:
- FoAM
- TU
- Nadine
- Performing Pictures
- Foamlab
- Spacemakers
- Project Atol
- KIBU
- Dock
Next steps:
- Descriptions of different threads posted on google docs by 6th of aug, including success criteria
- define purpose (Carole to send notes)
- 10th of aug - send docs to CCP
- asap: commitments by partners - budget outlay (%)