Uh, who are you, again?
Trembling Aspen | Series 04_My Life Here | Issue_17
How do I catch you up, when I have a difficult time keeping up with what’s happening day to day?
Rather than look back, I’ll look forward. Right now forward is south, toward Shin-Osaka on the bullet train traveling at ungodly speeds through the Japanese country side. Ironically, at 300 km/h I find the pause I need to compile notes, remember what all has happened, celebrate, luxuriate in things going well. Are things allowed to go well with all that’s happening in the world?
I bought onigiri and cold tea at the konbini in Shin-Yokohama station. I’m saving for later. It’s 6:30 now, I woke up at 4:00. On my left the sun is comfortably up over the horizon. It’ll take seven hours to get to Kaiyama Highschool where I’m meeting the rest of the group. The “group” is Pino, an architect from Germany with whom I have planned the trip, Musria (who I’ve never met) from Ehime University, and Karl, Pino’s friend who lives in Tokushima and is connecting us with all the people we’ll be talking to today.
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That's as much as I wrote. Then I was dashing from train station to bus station. Writing on the bus was impossible. Then I was dashing from one bus station to another bus station. Writing on that bus was even more impossible-er.
I was going to be so cool. I had this nifty plan to go through my calendar for the next week—still looking forward you see—and write a bit about each thing happening that week. It was a brilliant plan.
Except it's already next week. I'm already back from Kamiyama (exhausted), and one of the things happening "next week" (a performance art piece) has already happened. The next thing happening next week (Keio students coming to KocoGarden) is happening in about two hours. Then there's another thing happening after that at 7:30 (a screening of a community film project created in Koganecho by a Tokyo University of the Arts student). Whew.
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Okay. Here we go. I'm copying and pasting something I posted on the BioFi Community of Practice.(1) It's cheating, I know. But seriously, I need to get some of this fruit plucked, washed, put in a basket an in front of your eyeballs.
It's going to raise questions. That's a good thing. Send the questions to me via email, Instagram or WhatsApp and we'll start scaling the mountain of Getting Caught Up together.
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Hylo reply
https://www.hylo.com/groups/biofi/post/80063
Hi Alyx
Fantastic! I was so surprised to see a post about solarpunk!
I’m running something called The Solarpunk Playground out of my studio in Yokohama, Japan! Synchronicity! Serendipity! (That’s a lot of exclamation marks, I know. But come on, pretty cool no?)
Would it be okay to share your post with folks who aren’t part of this community?
I’m meeting with a some Tokyo University students tomorrow. They’re interested in Solarpunk and your post would be a fantastic, inspiring, timely introduction.
I’m an artist in residence in here in Yokohama. My studio has become an ongoing “social sculpture” called KocoGarden which I describe as a “conversation garden (会話の庭).”
The Solarpunk Playground, hosted out of KocoGarden, involves art installations that help people experience some facet of a hopeful future, as well as writing about that same hopeful future. My hope is for a dynamic, generative feedback loop of imagination to evolve into...something. A novel? Likely. Manga? Maybe. A game? Perhaps.
My writing has two main story arcs. One is the story of Aki, a 14 year old boy who is apprenticing to be a “river steward.” He lives in my neighbourhood (Koganecho) in the year 2050. The second arc is set in 2024 and follows the story of Aki’s grandfather, who works for a large Japanese corporation. Aki’s grandfather is a key part of “The Great Murmuration,” a constellation of events that lead to humanity’s trajectory shifting from cyberpunk to solarpunk.
To get the writing started, I’ve published a zine that folks in the neighbourhood can read and interact with. The zine is a smattering of scenes with no cohesive narrative (as yet).
At the same time, back in the real world, I am developing and promoting “emergent urban design” in both Tokyo and Yokohama.” The solarpunk writing related to the ecological, social and economic specifics of regenerative initiatives in an urban watershed in a Japanese context is coming from that work.
Thus, your post would be a fantastic addition to our conversation tomorrow as it has ecological, social and economic specifics I haven’t got to yet.
(1) It'd take a bit to explain, so I pulled this from Group Purpose: The purpose of the BioFi Community of Practice is to cultivate and support a global community of practitioners who are designing, capitalizing, implementing, and evolving Bioregional Financing Facilities through peer-to-peer learning and coordination.
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BONUS PICS OF KAMIYAMA
(a.k.a.barefaced appeasement)
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One last thought. Now, more than ever, I feel the need for a realistically hopeful vision of the future. Yes. It's still possible. Maybe more so.
Hey, I’m Steve, an artist-in-residence in Yokohama, Japan. I make collaborative art, participatory art, interactive new media installations, and abstract visual art. I explore themes of home, identity, belonging and how to live your life like a work of art. I write about it all in this very newsletter, Trembling Aspen.
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