Why do organizers love science metaphors so much? Rhizomes, dandelions, "grassroots." Maybe it’s our conscious or subconscious desire to realign human social organization with the organization of the natural world.
Perhaps we love science fiction for similar reasons – a longing to align our present strategies with viable futures, or scheme together on methods to navigate future crises collaboratively; to ask ourselves what it means to be human, and how to live in a constantly changing natural world.
What is the natural world anyways? As the future unfolds, the line between technology and biology is becoming increasingly blurry. What potential for liberation lives in that blurry line? What potential for exploitation?
If, as Drew Dellinger writes, "the future belongs to the most compelling story," we need a new paradigm of authorship. As long as the tools of writing the future lie in the hands of corporations, and a narrow demographic of technologically privileged people, the vast majority of the world will remain objects within a dominant narrative of exploitation and violence.
There is a growing network of "Others," people at the margins and the borderlands of power, who are not only writing a new story, but re-imagining authorship, towards a more participatory, emergent future.
Science & Social Movements at the AMC is a call for Others to come together to talk of technology, science, science fiction, social movement theory, and other geekery.
We are seeking sessions that:
- "read" natural science phenomena, such as emergence, fractals, and other complex systems, as forms of media that contain lessons for our communities and our movements for social transformation.
- intersect with the Transformative Art Practice Space to share methods of artmaking that sharpen and complicate our collective imaginations of the future, fostering feedback loops of self-transformation and community transformation through the process.
- intersect with the Discovering Technology Lab to demystify existing technologies and build visions for future technologies that enhance self-determination, creativity and interdependence within our communities.
- build off the awesomeness of past AMCs' Sci-Fi Geekout and Octavia Butler Emergent Strategy Sessions, growing the practice of reading and writing transformative science fiction politically, critically, and collaboratively.
Proposals are due March 8, 2013 at midnight.
You may post comments or questions for the organizers on the Science & Social Movements discussion page on AMPtalk.
