The job of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible. A powerful way to combat destructive behaviors of any kind is to construct a sound image of where you’d like to be at some point in the future. Explore what it will sound, look, taste, and feel like to live your future life, to be your future self. And then assess each temptation you face with this image in mind. Weigh whether it will move you closer or further away from that future. Seduce yourself, appropriate your own longing for a better, more pleasurable, more spectacular future.
The movement is a call to action for studios to make movies, for artists to paint pictures, and for anyone with access to the means of creation and communication to participate in the most pragmatic form of dreaming. To imagine a world so compelling you don’t want to wake up—not until the dreamworld becomes reality. To create something literal, like Akon’s newly announced project to build a real life Wakanda in Senegal.
Solarpunk just might be the cultural movement we deserve in the midst of our ongoing trials and tribulations. It’s the one we need to make the rest of this decade a palatable, even euphoric experience. Sometimes, demanding to thrive is the very best way to survive. It is the necessity and audacity not only of hope, but of beauty.
