“My world, my Earth,
is a ruin.
A planet spoiled
by the human species.
…
This is a living world,
a harmony.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s science fiction visions, we mapped socio-ecological utopias and dystopias as part of the exhibition „Terra incognita – Questions for the Earth“.
The two-day workshop began with a picnic in the the Lantz Park in Düsseldorf Lohausen. Audiowalks conducted us on a journey to (un)avoidable dystopias and utopias-between concrete places and non-places, the park’s ecosystem and forms of symbiogenetic coexistence.
The resulting audio map narrates explorations into possible futures and aims to orient our struggles for ecological and social transformation.
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The term ‘Terra incognita’ is a violent colonial imagination. Historically, it has been an expression of the idea of ‘unknown’ parts of the earth, parts to be ‘discovered’, parts to be conquered, and hence it was also used by European colonial powers. In the spirit of the exhibition concept, we distance ourselves from an undifferentiated and ahistorical use of the term, which negates or trivializes the violence and destruction associated with it. In the workshop we aimed to understand human and more-than-human entities as part of a planetary system and thus to overcome the notion of Earth, or parts of Earth, as external spaces to be conquered. For this, it seems fundamental to us to be aware of historical and continuing exploitative conditions and to ruthlessly name their effects in our (also verbal) actions. Only through this awareness is it possible to unlearn exploitative and discriminatory ways of acting.
