{"id":1420,"date":"2024-05-28T11:27:30","date_gmt":"2024-05-28T07:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nikan-demo.ir\/toolkit\/?page_id=1420"},"modified":"2024-06-02T15:51:17","modified_gmt":"2024-06-02T12:21:17","slug":"ecological-imagination","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nikan-demo.ir\/toolkit\/ecological-imagination\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecological Imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tPreparing \n\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>

More than Human Ecological Imagination<\/span><\/span><\/h2>
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In times of ecological crisis, biodiversity loss, and climate change, these practices support us to draw from the expansiveness of planetary intelligences.<\/span><\/p>

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What might it mean, as Superflux suggest in their manifesto, to learn from the flora and fauna around us \u2013\u00a0how they grow, improvise, and collaborate \u2013\u00a0in order to inform the way that we work towards a new and better world? What might it mean, as Furtherfield and Sympoieses suggest, to learn from our more-than-human kin, resisting human exceptionalism in order to imagine and create a world that is equitable and just for all beings. For what is the work of \u2018collective imagination\u2019 if it does not take into account the full collective, human or not?<\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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A More Than Human Manifesto<\/h2>
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Tool:<\/b> A manifesto<\/span><\/p>

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Duration: <\/b>~ 5 mins<\/span><\/p>


Contributors:<\/b> Founded by Anab Jain and Jon Ardern, Superflux creates worlds, stories and guiding visions that provoke and inspire us to engage with the precarity of our rapidly changing world. For its fifteen years of contribution to speculative and futures design with a committed social mission,<\/span> Superflux received the Design Studio of the Year Award in 2021<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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We are more than human. We know where we are.<\/h2>
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Our actions have caused disastrous imbalances. The Earth\u2019s climate system is in peril: animal populations destroyed, soil degraded. People alive today will witness the extinction of thousands, if not millions, of species.<\/span><\/p>

But this isn't just an abstract tragedy happening to other lifeforms. Our fates, it turns out, are more interwoven than our predecessors knew. Without our kin \u2013 butterflies, birds, bees, lichen \u2013 humanity can not survive on earth.<\/span><\/p>

That\u2019s why we\u2019re calling time on human exceptionalism. It\u2019s not working for the planet. It\u2019s not working for humanity. We believe that humankind needs to think beyond itself.<\/span><\/p>

We need to remember that we are not just on this Earth: we are <\/span>of<\/span><\/i> this Earth. The interdependence is real: humanity as ecology, ecology as humanity. Both the head and the heart demand this mental leap, this act of surrender.<\/span><\/p>

The awe of small things helps: the morning bird song; the smell of rain; the winter sunset. We need to cultivate a reverence for the beauty and embodied intelligence of our ecosystem. We need to <\/span>feel<\/span><\/i> that its intelligence may be greater than ours.<\/span><\/p>

No more treating nature as a resource for extraction, exploitation and consumption. There is no nourishment here. Instead, we must foster mutual admiration and respect.<\/span><\/p>

This more-than-human spirit will encourage us to forge new relationships with the species we share our planet with. Stripping an ecosystem for our \"needs\" must become as aberrant to us as cutting a piece of your flesh off to feed yourself.<\/span><\/p>

Real change \u2013 more-than-human change \u2013 is possible.<\/span><\/p>

For those schooled in a dichotomy between \"humanity\" and \"nature\", we will need to change how we think. This will be hard. We will need a renewal of our beliefs, of what we value or think of as \"good\". New taboos, too. We will rediscover old stories, stories that, though muted by the norms of an extractive capitalism, have never gone away.<\/span><\/p>

But where there is life, hope remains. We can pair incredible power with humility and care, foresight with stewardship. Real change \u2013 more-than-human change \u2013 is possible.<\/span><\/p>

We need to move. Here\u2019s how:<\/span><\/p>

Move from <\/b>fixing<\/i><\/b> to <\/b>caring<\/i><\/b><\/p>

Let\u2019s move away from the techno-deterministic pull of the language around \"fixing\". When we foreground the idea of care, it inherently embodies ideas of fixing, building, making and everything necessary to take care of that particular thing, person, tree, insect, bird, animal, us, them, everyone.<\/span><\/p>

Move from <\/b>planning<\/i><\/b> to <\/b>gardening<\/i><\/b><\/p>

Modernism\u2019s most spectacular failures have happened when a belief in top-down planning crashes into the messy complexities of life. We should swap set squares for gardening gloves: we need to nurture and grow, adapt to rather than impose on.<\/span><\/p>

Move from <\/b>systems<\/i><\/b> to <\/b>assemblages<\/i><\/b>, from <\/b>knots<\/i><\/b> to <\/b>nodes<\/i><\/b><\/p>

Acknowledging the entanglements without the desire to have the \"full overview\", keeps us open to surprising possibilities. And it reflects the deeply entangled co-evolution of humans and non-humans \u2013 think wolves, men and dogs, or the soil as a living organism.<\/span><\/p>

Move from <\/b>innovation<\/i><\/b> to <\/b>resurgence<\/i><\/b><\/p>

After a forest fire, seedlings sprout in the ashes, and, with time, another forest may grow up in the burn. The regrowing forest is an example of what we are calling resurgence. Whereas \"innovation\" fixates on the new and the different, resurgence forges assemblages of multispecies livability in the midst of disturbance.<\/span><\/p>

Move from <\/b>independence<\/i><\/b> to <\/b>interdependence<\/i><\/b><\/p>

We value and celebrate independence, from the first steps a baby takes to the geopolitical decisions we make. What if, instead of independence, instead of constantly valuing individual success, we celebrate our interdependence with each other and all species?<\/span><\/p>

Move from <\/b>extinction<\/i><\/b> to <\/b>precarity<\/i><\/b><\/p>

Rather than retreat from the anxiety of a singular, apocalyptic endpoint such as extinction, could we instead consider the possibility of precarious flourishing?<\/span><\/p>

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Further Resources:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Calling for a more-than-human politics<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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More Than Human Live Action Roleplay<\/h2>
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Tool:<\/b> A guide to more-than-human live action roleplay and a guided meditation\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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Duration:<\/b> ~30 mins - several days!<\/span><\/p>

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Contributors:<\/b> Lara Houston and Ruth Catlow from Furtherfield, a gallery that connects people to new ideas, critical thinking and imaginative possibilities for art, technology and the world around us. Through artworks, labs and debate people from all walks of life explore today\u2019s important questions.<\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Watch Azul Carolina Duque from GTDF talk us through their social cartography, The House That Modernity Built. Feel free to explore the text and recommended resources below if you would like to explore further.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Explanation<\/b>
<\/b>Live Action Role Play games (LARPs) involve the collaborative co-creation of a shared imaginary world, using improvisational techniques. LARPs have a<\/span> long history<\/span><\/a>, with many different traditions. What\u2019s different about a more-than-human role-play is that it invites people to imagine and then inhabit the character of another living being, such as grass, geese, bees or stag beetles.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Image: Film still from a meditation. Part of <\/span>The Interspecies Festival of Finsbury Park 2023<\/span><\/i> by Tracy Kiryango. Courtesy of Furtherfield.<\/span><\/p>

A scenario<\/b>
<\/b>A LARP generally starts with a particular scenario. Sometimes these can be really specific, responding to the characteristics or urgencies of a particular time and place, like the five-year <\/span>Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025<\/span><\/i> project described below. However, they can also be very straightforward, such as this Interspecies Meditation, a 30-minute guided body-scan that helps listeners to imagine themselves in a more-than-human body, also created as part of <\/span>Treaty<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

[<\/span>EMBED MEDITATION TRACK HERE<\/span><\/a>]<\/span><\/p>

This 30 minute guided body-scan meditation can be practised alone or with others to build empathy pathways to other life forms. We use our imaginations and a bonding ritual to enter the body and consciousness of a different species and to reflect on the nature of their existence. This ritual transports us to the interspecies multiverse where we sit for a guided meditation.<\/span><\/p>

More-than-human characters<\/b>
<\/b>In preparation for a more-than-human LARP, players are invited to choose, or are matched with a character who has some stake in the scenario. They are then supported to add depth and detail. If a player is to become a bee, they might ask themselves: what do bees do all day? What matters most to me as a bee? What job do I undertake in the hive? What motivates me, and what challenges do I face? Which other species do I interact with most, and how? This process aims to sensitise human players to the lives of other species.<\/span><\/p>

A co-created world<\/b>
<\/b>When the role-play begins, each participant stays in character throughout. Unlike a scripted theatre play, LARPs involved shared improvisation. Players interact and improvise in response to a scenario to build up a shared world. Through conversation, problem solving, and a variety of group activities they bring a new imaginary set of relations into existence.\u00a0 They use humour and irony to deal with the obvious limitations of role-playing as another species.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

There is a limit to what humans can really know about what it\u2019s like to be a bee. Yet trying\u2013and failing\u2013together involves learning about more-than-human lives, and creates new forms of interspecies intimacy and empathy pathways that would not have existed otherwise. By decentering their human selves they start to perceive new dimensions of social and material reality beyond the limits of human sense perception. LARPing is therefore a powerful prefigurative practice - for rehearsing for the worlds we wish for.<\/span><\/p>

Our example - The Treaty of Finsbury Park<\/b><\/p>

[EMBED VIDEO]<\/span><\/a><\/p>


<\/span>The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025<\/span><\/i> is an immersive fiction created in response to the <\/span>2019 IPBES report<\/span><\/a> that revealed over a million species on Earth are at risk of extinction because of human action. It invites us to take seriously questions around more-than-human democracy and looks at what it would be like if other species were to rise up and demand equal rights with humans. Like many urban parks, Finsbury Park is fraught with environmental issues from noxious gases and traffic noises to governance struggles and financial sustainability. If colonial systems of dominance and control over living beings continue, we all face an apocalypse. Yet, cities are more biodiverse than we often realise \u2013\u00a0so, what better place than a city park for humans to discover more about what role we can play in growing our understanding and promoting biodiversity where we live?<\/span><\/p>

In <\/span>Treaty<\/span><\/i> players were matched<\/span> with one of seven <\/span>Mentor Species of Finsbury Park<\/span><\/a> - the dogs, the bees, the squirrels, the London plane trees, the grass, the stag beetles and the Canada geese. Before events, they connected with and learned about their creaturely mentors. They were supported through costume, scenarios, and ceremony to spend games inside the mind and body of their Mentor Species \u2013 with their human self as witness to all that occurs. In this scenario this multi-species citizenry rises up and finds its political voice through a story in three episodes:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>