Tactics to create fear of a potential environmental disaster may not always work and may not even be productive. In his book Being Ecological, Timothy Morton practically shows that simply accumulating data regarding the current ecological situation caused by the Anthropocene era may not always be productive and may, on the contrary, have the opposite effect: for example, it may cause post-traumatic stress disorder, which often hides behind the mask of apparent disinterest or paralysis. In this context, imagination can then be offered as a kind of solution: ideas of how the world can work in a better or different way, the imagination of utopias or speculative design. These alternative worlds do not have to be a trivial escapist refuge where one can hide from the ravaged Earth, but on the contrary they can carry the message of a better world and show how our world can work in a different way, inspiring new possible relationships with the earth and with the earth itself. With their imaginative power, alternative worlds can teach us how to transform our thinking, imagination and, as a result, our behavior and relationship to the earth. With its potential, imagination is able to both provide refuge, create cracks in the walls of minds and worlds, and also provide space for healing and new kinds of thinking.

authors:

Planeta Kampus (Vojtěch Liebl, Denisa Půbalová, Tomáš Potůček, Monika Škodová, Radka Krajíčková, Jonáš Jagerčík, Tobiáš Jagerčík)

Artbiom (Veronika Hanáková, Tereza Pinkasová, Tomáš Samek, Andrea Szostoková, Alexander Takáč, Tereza Vydrová)

Martin Pondělíček

Eva Maceková

Petra Janda

curators: Artbiom (head curator Tereza Nováková)

photo: Michal Czanderle (Petra Janda, Vulvonautka, 2023, detail, from exhibition Domů, Galerie Jelení)