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===== D&S concepts ====

A few notes about the themes, questions, hypotheses and methods behind Dust and Shadow.


==== Themes ====

**Desertification**

  * Everything shrivels up and erodes into dust; desertification related to ecology and culture (intergenerational memory)
  * Humans come and go
  * (Engineering) mistakes cause large scale ecological transformations


**Probabilistic Future Preparedness**

  * Phoenix holding onto permanence
  * Civilisations with expiration dates (one moment or slow subsiding)
  * Prehearsals of obsolescence
  * Urban desert / urban wilderness


**Attunement**


  * material wonder & wander
  * layered time, massive scale
  * beyond human relationships
  * solitude and indifference
  * (i)nertness
  * naming
  * conviviality with diverse entities, different lenses of interrelation

**Zombie utopias**

  * Shadows
  * Ghost towns
  * Haunted utopias, vampiric utopias, parasitic utopias
  * Troubled past
  * Living but already dead (eg. Paradise City); planning for unsustainability

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==== Core questions ====

**What are the (environmental) critical uncertainties in the region?** 
  * What/how to extrapolate local conditions to other deserts and environments on their way to become deserts?

**What does a thalient laboratory in the desert look like?**
  * How to translate animist attitudes into worldviews compatible with contemporary techno-materialist societies?
  * How to (re)animate pre-modern sensibilities without dualisms of light/dark, good/evil, love/power?
  * What arts, sciences and technologies become possible if we widen the 'sentience spectrum' and emphasize experience and interaction with diverse beings?
  * Should we refrain from speech and use the visceral language of experience?
  * How do we speak of relations as well as things?

**What might urban futures in the American South West look like?**
  * How to turn or move from zombie/vampiric utopias to regenerative ('log') eutopias? 
  * What would a banishing ritual for haunted utopias be like?
  * Why attempt to build cities in the desert?
  * What would a pre-enactment for futures of Phoenix look like?


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==== Hypotheses ====

**We can adapt or mitigate climate chaos (etc.) by changing mindset/worldview and their underlying myths.** 
  * Art can initiate, amplify or test this change.
  * We can draw inspiration from animism, panpsychism, shinto, shamanism, etc.  
  * Any technological solutions will be perverted by existing dominant ideologies (and vice versa)
  * Myth-making and reactivating myths can animate inert geological and architectural markers
  * We need a new form of geomancy
  * There are sacred refugia and wild sanctuaries to uncover (explore/preserve)

**We can become human receptors and listening devices**
  * We practice the craft of silence and heterogeneous hearing to help us attune to our surroundings. 
  * At all times there are other beings listening. We can hear each other if we pay attention. 
  * We tread lightly seeing with new eyes. We witness and weave threads of connection with other people and places (FoAM)
  * Our language can liquefy
  * We communicate to connect, not dissect


**The desert invites unencumbered experimentation, yet the desert is also unforgiving**
  * It is possible to thrive in uncertainty
  * Objectives obscure progress
  * We should move from social contracts to natural contracts
  * It is possible to transform zombie utopias into fertile compost for new eutopias 
  * Neo-reaction and new age are each other's flip-sides, collapsing complexity of uncertainty into platitudes


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==== Methods ====

... vaporous thoughts condensed into propositions, commonplaces and fieldguides, by:
  * seeing, listening, tasting, smelling, experiencing (sensing & activating)
  * walking
  * fieldwork
  * inquiry (critical, embodied...)
  * experiential futures and speculative design 
  * action research
  * contemporary rituals and peak experiences
  * contemplative practices and attunement
  * writing


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