Newsletter #11
Discover more from Inter-Narratives
Newsletter #11
Narrative stack | Healthful world | Liminal space
Hi everyone,
Our eyes and hearts are focused on the unfolding tragedy in Gaza. Do let us know if there is narrative insight/ work you’re finding particularly helpful when communicating on it.
The Shares below reflect on the role of narratives in these times: how to work with the emerging ‘Narrative stack’ to find ways through to a ‘Healthful world’, beyond this ‘Liminal space’.
We also have our second Public Session coming up, and we’re very much looking forward to seeing you there.
Shared with care in solidarity 🫶
Public Session
Narratives for Stewarding a Different Economy Into Existence
Nov 14th | 16:30-18:00 GMT
We have designed the systems we inhabit— economic, political, socio-cultural — so that, far from nurturing all life, they erode it, and it's vital that we work out how to redesign our economy to support all life on Earth. Our curator Cassie Robinson will host this session on what needs composting from our current economic models, the new narratives we need to seed to see different economies emerge, and examples of where that’s already happening. She will be joined by Ashanti Kunene (Culture Hack Labs, Learning 2 Unlearn), Azul Carolina Duque (Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, En Cuidado da terra) and Anastasia Mourogova Millin (Second Muse Capital, Coralus).
Shares
Key: 📝 Article | 📋 Report | 🎬 Video | 🎙️ Podcast | ⚙️ Tool
Narratives have consequences: the problem with stories of threat and fear
Alex Randall, Moving Climate
Narratives that suggest climate change creates (international) migration, often used to motivate climate action, are typically inaccurate and dangerous. Inaccurate because people’s movements are often within their country. Dangerous because in order for the narratives to work “migrants and refugees must be cast as a force of chaos and danger”, which creates space for totalitarian responses and a risk of violence towards displaced peoples.
#issuenarrative #tactics
A History of Narrative Environments
Venkatesh Rao, Protocol Narratives, Ribbonfarm Studio
A reflection on the state of the narrative ‘stack’, and how it has emerged in recent history from developments in communications technology. The arrival of the ‘meme-vibe layer’ – “a living mass of human-in-the-loop narrative ooze” – combined with the AI-supercharged ‘world-building layer’ are acting as a “narrative accelerant”. So far we are avoiding an ‘unnarratable meltdown’ thanks to the emergence of shared ‘narrative protocols’ “capable of containing the complexity and scale”.
#deepnarrative #narrativestrategy
How To Break Out of a Simulation
Rachel Donald, Planet: Critical
“How do we exit the hyperreal? What can we create which reveals the real of biophysical reality?” We need “real infrastructure which re-embeds us in our reality: We need a healthful world to be a healthful people. A healthful people shares, collaborates and takes care. A healthful world does not see its planetary limits exploited under the guise of simulated systems.”
#deepnarrative #tactics
Why Our Popular Mass Movements Fail
Chris Hedges, The Chris Hedges Report
“The age of the spectacle means those entranced by its images are ‘molded to its laws’. Even “disciplined political organizations are not, in and of themselves, sufficient.” Transformative change requires “skilled organizers, self-discipline, an alternative ideological vision, revolutionary art and education…sustained disruptions of power, and most importantly leaders who represent the movement. Revolutions are long, difficult projects that take years to make, slowly and often imperceptibly eating away at the foundations of power.”
#tactics
Back To The Land
Culture Hack Labs
“Land defenders who are part of the Diaspora and Ancestral Nations from Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Turtle Island and Milpamérica (Alaska, Canadá, USA, México, Guatemala, Salvador & Honduras) gathered to hack the narrative of land ownership, together they call to get Back to the Land as a global transition to liberate ourselves with Mother Earth.” Includes various principles and guides for action.
#narrativestrategy #tactics
📋 | ⚙️ Read here
What’s Important?
Nora Bateson & Daniel Schmachtenberger & Nate Hagens, NAV
A deep reflection on why we’re here, what matters, and how to find ways through what is coming. Covers power law dynamics, ‘warm data’, the metacrisis, the economic value of “empty people”, “human condition(ing)”, “graceful invisible magic”, our “radically hypo-normal environment”, our “omni-relational” selves, and the need to “drop the certainty” to become “disoriented”.
#deepnarrative #tactics
🎬 See here
Becoming Intentional Gods: Claiming the Future
Indy Johar & Manda Scott, Accidental Gods
“We are at a moment of decision: We either step forward into our own Great Destruction, which could theoretically see us wipe out all of humanity and most of the More than Human World…Or we could step into…‘The Great Peace’, claiming our birthright as the Interstitial Generation between the old paradigm of extraction, consumption and pollution—and the new one that could arise where we accept the interbecoming of all things, where we as individual humans take our place in a community of care and experience that encompasses all of the world.”
#deepnarrative
🎙️ Listen here
Events
A Home For Every Hero
Harmony Labs & Gutsy Media | Nov 1st | 19:00 GMT | Online
A sharing of research into “how people’s diverse values shape the media they consume and create across video games, TV shows, and movies...The result is a first-of-its-kind map of storyscapes. This map can be used as a tool to construct truly diverse, truly engaging stories across all storytelling platforms where audiences of all types can see themselves as a hero and find a place of belonging.” The webinar will also include an introduction to an immersive videogame that has been built using the research and map.
Murder in the Citizens’ Jury
Green Stories | Nov 11th 3pm GMT | Online and at Southampton Uni
“A 25min one-person play exploring the ethical dilemma of the Director of Public Prosecutions, who must decide whether to prosecute a murder. If he does so, he will alienate his family, and it will mean the end for citizens’ assemblies – a form of direct democracy which many believe could be the silver bullet to avert a climate crisis. Drawing upon the tradition of ‘theatre-in-education’, the objective is to use the play to raise awareness of citizens’ assemblies.“ Forms part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science.
🗓️ Watch here
Migration, Climate Justice & The Power of Stories
Counterpoints Arts & Climate Spring | Nov 17th 18:30 GMT | London Southbank Centre
“This salon explores the intersection of migration and climate justice through the lens of artistic practice and the works of artists and guests who harness the power of storytelling. By bringing into a conversation visionary guests and artists, it explores approaches that shine a light on new narratives uncovering the intricate connections between migration and environmental justice.” Hosted by Lucy Stone, Founder and Director of Climate Spring, and Dijana Rakovic, Senior Producer at Counterpoints Arts.
Community Solo
Becoming Crew | Nov 23rd-Dec 15th; Jan 25th-Feb 15th
“Who are you becoming as this civilisational story breaks down? A 5 week guided online learning journey which invites you to explore your deepest feelings in these unravelling times…Join us to: Embrace the darkness of this season - connect to this moment in Earth’s cycles, learn to winter well & let go of what is in decay; Deepen your belonging to nature - locally to you, through creative, embodied practices to re-entangle with a wider intelligence of life; Stoke your creativity and wild imagination - through myth, story, creativity & group reflective practices.”
Shifting Landscapes: An Immersive Exhibition
Emerge Magazine | Dec 1st-10th | London
“We have arrived at a threshold: a liminal space where the world we have known is coming undone and new configurations are still taking shape…Within our shared grief at this unfolding destruction, a space is opening, beckoning us to remember that we are not—and have never been—separate from the enfolding Earth…Immersed in the music of birdsong, the migration of microbes, the sounds of silence, the breath of a rainforest, might we remember ourselves as an extension of the changing Earth? What seeds of reciprocity, of abundant mutual care, might take root?”
🗓️ Details here
Quotes
(This selection of quotes is intended as a resource, in the hope that they may be useful for your own communications.)
“The opposite of fear is not courage, but the ability to keep our eyes open to the larger reality.” – Ece Temelkuran
“The whole of the cosmos is relational. Relations are primary to the things that are related, they are more basic. First we have a web of relations, and we then pick out the crossover points and call them things.” – Ian McGilchrist
“We have a longer human history, of being part of the solution, and as being propagators, pollinators and accelerators of these natural processes, than the current story around being part of the problem.” – Timo Granzotti
“In order for me to write poetry that’s not political, I must listen to the birds and in order to hear the birds the warplanes must be silent.” – Marwan Makhoul
“Look closely at the present you are constructing, it should look like the future you are dreaming.” – Alice Walker
Thanks for joining us, see you here again in two weeks.
A reminder that if you have something that you’d love to see in these newsletters, or if you have any feedback, please reach out at inter-narratives@greenfunders.org
Very best,
Paddy & Ella