VISIONARY
FICTIONS
The term ‘Visionary Ecologies’ proposes practices of speculating possible environmental relationships through what we refer to as ecological visions or fictions. Visions that work intentionally towards liberation and alternative futures of justice. These visions may be presented through books, comics, films, artworks or any creative work that aims to critically inspect human-ecological interactions with our more-than-human worlds.
VE builds on Visionary Fiction which distinguishes strains of science fiction that intentionally builds worlds towards liberation and justice from the more dominant strain of science fiction —- which often reinforces patriarchal, anthropocentric, racist, and colonial narratives of power.
“Visionary fiction encompasses all of the fantastic - with the arc always bending towards justice” Adrienne Maree Brown
MULTISPECIES
ENCOUNTERS
Multispecies studies are a new form of social sciences in which, finally, we have become aware of the existence of other organisms and the relationships we establish with them. Thus, fauna, flora, funga, bacteria and viruses move from objects to subjects, and the idea of the "other" (previously assigned to non-Western cultures) is relocated to the non-human.
Being-in-common, that is, the community, can no longer be thought or felt as a community of human beings only; it must become a multispecies community that includes all those with whom we weave life on this strange and animated planet.
QUEER
ECOLOGY
Queer ecologies involves challenging traditional binarisms that exist within human understandings of life: female/male, nature/culture, living/non-living, individual/collective among many other anthropocentric dichotomies. Our interest in queering ecology lies in enabling humans to imagine an infinite number of possible Natures and Futures along them. In the words of Alex Johnson: “The living world exhibits monogamy. But it also exhibits orgies, gender transformation, and cloning. What, then, is natural? All of it. None of it. Instead of using the more-than-human world as justification for or against certain behavior and characteristics, let’s use the more-than-human world as a humbling indication of the capacity and diversity of all life on Earth.”
SENTIENT
ECOLOGY
Sentient ecology explores the knowledge and perceptions people have of their environments. It is knowledge, not of a formal, authorized kind, but transmissible knowledge in contexts outside those of its practical application. Sentient ecology brings humans into communicative relationships with the ecological world and extends the concept of personhood to animals, plants, and ultimately to all ecological life on Earth.
VISIONARY
ECOLOGIES
Visionary ecologies is a term we propose for the practice of speculating possible environmental relationships through what we call ecological visions or fictions. These visions may be presented through books, comics, films, artworks or any creative work that aims to critically inspect human-ecological interactions with a more-than-human world. Originating with science fiction and fantasy writers, the practice of creating imaginary worlds is one that has gone on to influence many contemporary artists today who are experimenting with different platforms to create alternate realities and new visions for the future. The result is the creation and co-habitation of new worlds that work inside a field of expanded interspecies interactions.