hope

hope ~ reclaiming the future

We explore hope ~ not as naive optimism, but as a collective and empowering practice. In the face of ecological collapse, social injustice, and the rise of authoritarian forces, we ask: how can we reclaim the future through design and art in Connected Alternatives, Open Technologies.  Social Movements and Radical Reforms. These four tracks of transformation help us to guide the discussion. They complement each other and criss-cross paths.

With Connected Alternatives, we mean the multitude of mostly small and local projects and communities, which are practicing now, what is needed for a future society, based on commoning, care and circularity. They are or should be more and more interconnected – joining forces for mutual support and learning from each other, and for scaling-out instead of becoming co-opted or marginalised.

Social Movements are more dynamic – generating momentum in their peak phases, but then subside again. Opposed to the niche alternatives, they change the public debate and sometimes even dominant narratives and power relations. When things go well, niches are prospering in the larger landscape changed through social movements, while social movements benefit from the more stabile economic and cultural basis build up in niches over decades.

Through Radical Reforms the state and its institutions can provide favourable framework conditions for commoning, care and circularity. Ideally, they help to strengthen emancipatory transformations, for example by providing more time (reduction of labour time) and space (commons-public partnerships). They can foster inclusion and care, while hindering destruction of the basis of life. Such reforms usually are achieved through the pressure of social movements.

›Technofixes‹ are the naive believe or strategic message, that business-as-usual can proceed, because technological progress will save us. Still, without doubt advanced technologies are required, also for distributed renewable energy production, the automatisation of unhealthy work and the democratisation of economy. But technologies need to be free and open to all, otherwise only the elites will benefit, and democratic control will be impossible. Thus, Open Technologies matter, also as instruments in the other transformation approaches.