You gotta try... Here's some solar-punk memeing - going toe-to-toe with carbon propaganda. Some SP style in the streets, too
We liked the spirit of this Twitter flare that rose up this week - a poster called @Omniharmonic who wanted to get stuck into the meme wars around climate change, by shooting for the stars. See the gallery above, and his tweet commentary below:
Solarpunk Propaganda! Gaia wants YOU to join the meme war on behalf of Life.
1/ We’re all being propagandized all the time. Our advertisements, movies, and TV shows all depict a world of endless consumption, a world driven by divide & conquer tactics that prey upon our fear.
2/ As Creators, we each have the ability to shift the quantum probabilities of reality by choosing where we place our attention.
3/ In this sense, even in the subtle ways our attention is hijacked by the distorted reality we’re fed by the media, we participate in the continuation of the status quo.
4/ This is why the Great War of our time is a spiritual war. This is why the weapons we wield in this spiritual war are memes. Memes are the structures of meaning through which we see the world, and it’s our structures of meaning that determine our behaviors and choices
5/ It’s never been easier to shift reality and the consequences of inaction have never been higher. The time is now to imagine a more beautiful world and meme it into being!
6/ One of the greatest psychological tactics deployed by capitalist memetics is the equivocation of free markets & capitalism. Capitalism is actually anti-free market because those who recursively accumulate capital restrict competition via economies of scale & regulatory capture.
You may recognise a kindred boldness in declaring the shift of attention, indeed ontology, implied by the Planet A framing and project we’re on… But an old friend of ours, Vinay Gupta, made a reasonable point below:
We’d also jump up to hand-wave that, not only is the institutional work for this change exactly what we’re attempting in our incubators and CANs approach, but we have a better term than institution - which is constitute. For more, read here.
But do we have an example of a new institution with a solar-punk face? Yes we literally do!
Above is Tippy, a project of the People’s Institute in New York. She’s a bus that’s trundling around encouraging New Yorkers’ to get involved in their first opportunity for participatory budgeting in the borough:
See this story from Secret NYC:
What’s now known as ‘The People’s Bus,’ wasn’t always a cultural hub for art, culture, and community engagement. In fact, from 2009-2021, it was actually used to transport detained people on Riker’s Island.
That is until the NYC Civic Engagement Commission (CEC), in partnership with the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Public Artist in Residency program, had the idea to transform it into something that could “[engage] people in NYC’s civic life through beauty and joy,” while sharing the powerful work being done by the CEC.
Community groups, artists, and cultural producers aided artist Yazmany Arboleda in painting and decorating the former correction bus, giving it a new life as a community center on wheels. The project quickly became a symbol of hope and connection.
“The People’s Bus is a gymnasium for the human imagination. A place to exercise our creativity together to imagine a future where all New Yorkers take care of each other,” said Yazmany Arboleda, The People’s Artist.
But in efforts to continue the project’s mission of creating a more equitable city, the CEC took their idea one step further. Now, the mobile community center has been converted into a large scale puppet designed to teach New Yorkers about NYC’s first citywide participatory budgeting process, known as ‘The People’s Money.’
Educational character, Tippy: “The Tender People’s Money Monster,” will tour the boroughs to spread knowledge about the new Participatory Budgeting process and celebrate participatory democracy. As it makes stops across the city, New Yorkers will be able to vote on how they want the city’s $5 million to be spent, letting communities decide where the funds will benefit them most.
Beyond its kooky and colorful exterior, Tippy’s interior is made with 8.8 million recycled beads donated by Materials for the Arts to represent NYC’s 8.8 million residents.
The far-reaching art project hopes to bridge the gap between citizens and their local government by changing the way it serves its people.
To learn more about The People’s Bus and its mission, see here.