Solarpunk Art - Blog Posts

ambrosia-tea

4 days ago

Solarpunk, realism, dystopia: a rant

Page 1 of comic. The uppermost caption states: "I like realistic Solarpunk. I think it's the best kind, actually!" Under it is a horizontal space filled with doodles: someone exiting a tool library, a girl holding a mended sock, a chama group is pooling donations, a woman browses Wikipedia, a volunteer is filling a bowl with free soup.
"By realistic I mean grounded. Something that we could imagine happening in our real world. No magic (a drawing of a girl with fire powers), no supernatural elements unless you know what you're doing (a talking cat), no cure-all tech (a man is claiming a tiny piece of tech is going to solve everything).
The artist appears. "I feel that way because of my answer to this question: what is Solarpunk for?"

Page 2. "Well, let's see...Solarpunk isn't just an aesthetic, it's an emerging genre and artistic movement." The statement is accompanied by mandala-like drawing of several hands drawing the Solarpunk symbol.
Then there's a dualistic drawing: Cyberpunk and Solarpunk next to each other. In the Cyberpunk drawing, a man is holding a gun, and in the other he is unloading soil from a big bag into a garden bed. Three tiny people are floating next to the Solarpunk man, imagining what tasty stuff can grow from that soil.
The caption reads: "Solarpunk is also sort of CyberPunk's counterpart. While Cyberpunk concerns itself with wrecking bad old systems, Solarpunk is about building new, better ones. SolarPunk's creation was very intentional - it's for letting us imagine a tomorrow that's not a fucking shitshow."
In the corner, the artist points at a box labeled "future" and asks "If it's alive, what do you reckon it looks like?"

Page 3. "And that tomorrow part is important! When it comes to technology, we can stop climate change and achieve a sustainable world right now." A whole section next to this text is filled with various sustainable technologies: perma- and polyculture, wind turbines, vernacular architecture, reforestation, libraries of everything, trains, trams, bikes, solar panels, habitat restoration, degrowth etc.
"We don't need to wait until a fancy piece of tech comes along and fixes everything." There's a rendition of that meme where people are huddling together to discuss something. A contraption called "carbon sucker 9000 appears". The group gives it a thumbs up and continues discussing their own stuff like minimizing plane travel.

"What we need is large cultural and societal change. But most people struggle to imagine anything but dystopia."
In a frame nearby, a rich guy gleefully puts his foot on a pair of scales, favoring a bag of money over the planet. However, just out of frame is a group of people with tools, ready to take the planet back.

"Solarpunk is for filling that blank space! And a grounded, though not unambitious, approach makes it feel more achievable to the average person."

Page 4. "If we can imagine absolute Cyberpunk dystopia with ease but not the opposite, it's because we don't have enough popular stories yet which would showcase that believable alternative." A lady is reading a Solarpunk book. She exclaims: "So you're telling me people can just do stuff without a monetary incentive or the risk of hunger and homelessness? Movie number 3752 about robots enslaving humanity was much more realistic!"
"The hard part for Solarpunks is imagining what the culture and structure of this new society would look like. How would it operate?" Drawing: the author sits gloomily at a desk, mumbling "I wish I could try out this hobby but the tools are so expensive, and I don't even know if it'll be a long-term interest or not...". But then they have an epiphany. "Wait, I could literally just go to the library!"
"How does this new world think? And what do we change about ourselves to get closer to it?" The final doodle is of a man stating we must ensure economic growth until the end of time, though the woman next to him retorts: "You and what endless planetary resources?" She then suggests that we instead produce what's necessary and give it to those who need it.

Page 5. "I find that thinking about the way we do particular things now, and then trying to restructure them in a solarpunk way helps a lot (if said things are worth keeping in the first place). Like, how would (insert thing) work if we gave a damn about its environmental and societal consequences? What are the large and small effects of it?"
Then there's three sections, each dealing with a different issue.
First, "What does free access to information and the dissolution of copyright and patents help achieve?" Drawing: a lady is reading - quote "literally any book or study" - on an e-reader. In her arm she has an implant, a glucose monitor that is free to both obtain and maintain.
Second, "How does library culture affect societal attitudes? How are people with compulsive hoarding treated? What assumptions exist in such a world?" Drawing: two girls are chatting. One says she has like 20 borrowings lying around at home, and at that the other covers her mouth with her hands. "Girl, what? Return them immediately!"
Lastly, "How are people with so-called shitty though important jobs get treated when money isn't a factor anymore?" Drawing: a man announces to his partner that he feels like janitor-ing for a bit. The partner sees no problem in it.

6th and final page. "If you want more ideas to think about, check out the Solarpunk Prompts podcast." There's a link to it in the post below.
"Things need not be perfect, they just have to be better on the whole." Then there's another horizontal spread. On the left, a person is asking another to fix their phone. The second one seems impressed by how old the model is. The first person says they've had it since they were 15. On the right, a young girl is asking her dad if it's true that "water was forbidden" in the past. He looks a little dazed, saying "well, sort of?" and thinking "oh boy, it's time for the talk". In the middle is a city landscape with lots of fruit trees, a bike lane, a tramline. People are chatting, a kid is drawing on the pavement, someone sits on a bench, a bird nibbles on an apple.

"Just because something is hard to imagine doesn't mean it's impossible. Unless it's magic. Magic is pretty impossible. Anyway...Go forth! Imagine shit! Lest the doomerism fungus consume us!"
End of comic.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone out there 🌸

You can find the Prompts podcast here, I drew some of the covers :D Also check out this digital library full of Creative Commons Solarpunk art (neither of these are sponsored).

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I would highly appreciate if you threw me a couple bucks on Buy Me a Coffee or bought a commission, my money number is only getting smaller these days 😔🤙