Culture as Nature
notes from future_fabulators_legacy
As climate chaos continues to ravage the globe, progressive developments in culture and society have paradoxically heralded an era of growing social stability, connectedness, and enlightenment amidst natural and human-made calamities. Humans are building underground dwellings and above ground glass cupolas which will range in size from that of houses to vast cities. Construction of long tunnels to connect these population centres has began, and enormous dams are being constructed to prevent flooding. Continuous storms rage across the earth's surface, and scientists predict that not much will survive above ground in just a few decades. Agriculture is difficult and expensive, animal and plant life everywhere endangered and on the brink of complete extinction.
In these extreme conditions, Future Fabulators have become one node in a collective social tissue that works to maintain and evolve connections between culture, nature, science and art within and between communities. Their task is challenging, but the circumstances have actually brought people together to face hardships in solidarity, and the importance of FFab's role in this collective is universally recognised. They focus on experiments in “sustainability in instability”, while traevlling on rugged sailing ships, collecting future scenarios in a smart database that turns scenarios into real world, context-aware experiments to be tested out in different communities around the world. The results of the experiments are shared as new fables on climate balance and non-anthropocentric civilisations. FFab's episodic series have dedicated, translocal community of followers. They are closely involved in connecting and translating between several newly emerging institutions and sciences whose focus is the natural world and the rediscovery of ways to live in harmony and equilibrium with ecosystems. School curriculums are centred on ecology, and plant and animal narratives are taught from the earliest age. Communication between plants, animals and humans is becoming a reality. Future Fabulators work to entwine these threads in narratives that connect, inspire and evolve communities, ensuring their resilience and creativity while working towards reinventing civilisation.
Below is a leaked draft from one of Ffab's co-creation sessions, possibly be turned into a series in 2017.
Earth planet, Spring 2050
Climate had become so erratic in the last 40 years that we can hardly call this planet friendly anymore. Nevertheless we are very conscious that we bare some responsibility to what is happening. We are willing to put our science and human consciousness at the service of this planet and contribute to heal the disasters that we have participated in creating. It has been decades now that we are impeded to communicate with you. The continuous storms and change in the magnetic fields is cutting us off from any communication channel and our climate continuous disasters are impeding any successful launch of space shuttles to visit the colony. In case this message reaches you somehow, please care to share with us if you have any knowledge that can help us heal our planet and re establish connections.
Message found in a capsule sent to the Mars colonies that reached destination
Earth is going through a rough patch, the planet is sick, rebelling to the coat of synthetic material and atmosphere holes created by humans. These disasters are not only not only the human race responsibility, since also the trajectory of the earth has changed lately, its magnetic poles inverted, and the sun is reaching toxic level of fumes, that are affection our atmosphere. As earths cant provide for its inhabitants anymore, Humans on the other hand, have grown closer together, over come many racial and economic differences in order to try and supply our race with what the planet is now finding hard to do. Mother Earth has become the suffering patient, and the human kind is trying to heal her.
New institutions have been created. New natural sciences have been born. Animals, Plants and rocks formation have been studies in depth and have gained new rights and a whole new level of respect from humans. Some ways of communication with some animals have been found and we can also capture their response pretty accurately. A few species of plans are also being found listening and communicating among themselves and in some case with us. The experiments are ongoing trying to decipher and come up with clear communication protocols. We want to understand them and be undertood. Our primary goals are now to live in harmony and respect of what once was an ecosystem in equilibrium. Stories of how plants used to heal us are thought in school, how animals move, live and procreate are the primary subject fro the education. Experiments on how to reestablish what once was our giving and generous plated are held everywhere in the globe, at every latitude and in every climate.
Communication among humans on the plated is till possible. A new currier of information bits has been harnessed: the wind. As nothing else more consistent that wind particles would hold the continuous storms that beat the surface of the earth. Humans now live mainly underground. Long tunnels connect the cities, and big powerful dams prevent floods to infiltrate the inhabited zones. Nothing or almost nothing survives on the surface for very long. We can only go out to the surface without protections for short trips. A few days maximum, and those days out on the open air, are extremely dangerous situations. We survive longer times under our super strong glass cupolas on the crust of the earth. Some are as small as houses, some are as big as cities, some are so many and so close together and form nations. But life is hard in this way. Agriculture is expensive, and animals and plants are at stakes. Only humans seem to be resilient and creative, surviving in every condition and trying to bring the rest of the plant through this into a better future.
This scenario is one of four Future Fabulators Legacy scenarios:
This scenario is further developed into a transmedia story by M-ITI: http://futurefabulators.m-iti.org/
maja