About transtopian world-building methods

Transtopian world-building is an iterative process where story-worlds and shared realities perpetually influence and transform each other. By embedding current situations and dilemmas into a story-world, this approach expands the boundaries of imagination and enables “worldings” (Taylor, 2023) that challenge the hegemony of social realities. The methods draws on the film industry’s story-worlds and their potential for neurodivergent research, specifically in addressing ethical climate actions.

Transtopian world-building generates an iterative process where a story-world and a shared reality perpetually transform each other. A looping swirling movement, with an in-between position where the overlaps and possible contaminations are considered. Moving current situations and dilemmas from shared realities through the story-world can push the imagination and expand what is considered possible and enable transformations or “worldings” (Taylor, 2023) in the shared reality, challenging narrow definitions of the present.

In the film industry there is an increased focus on story-worlds rather than characters or stories,  because a world concept can support multiple characters and multiple stories across multiple media (Jenkins, 2006).  From a story-world all kinds of products can quickly and coherently be developed as they comes into demand. Star wars, Lord of the rings, Marvel etc are all examples of this kind of transmedia storytelling, where everything from books to movies to toys are created, based on one and the same concept of a world.

This research employs the story-world format for its capacity to contain complex information and channel new scenarios. World-building offer neurodivergent ways to hold information and access memory, compensating for short-term memory deficits and facilitating visual thinking modes. By using story-worlds as containers for speculative hypotheses, this research processes a continuously growing set of situated knowledge, enabling its application in new and unpredictable situations.

Based at Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH), the world-building method was utilized to identify potential ethical actions for climate transformation there. Immersion in a hypothetical climate-just story-world decentered what what was currently considered possible or real, embedding everyday dilemmas within this framework to identify and implement possible action. These actions triggered new situations, which were processed through the story-world, thus intensifying and scaling up the experiments.

The underlying concept for this story-world emerged from a collaboration with Professor Ronald Mallett at the University of Connecticut. Learning about Mallett's theoretical model for a time machine in dept was eye opening for me. In short, you could say that if it were to be built, it would have completely different consequences than what we are used to seeing in sci-fi stories about time machines, where the main character travels back and forth in time on voyages of discovery. If we built this machine, we would never be able to travel with it, it would only open up a portal where the future would instead have access to us. As I saw it, the consequence would be that futures can intervene in our present time, and revolt against the “colonisation of the temporal”, that our current overuse of resources in practice means. It led me to develop a story world with the following premise: Future generations has, thanks to Mallett’s time technology, hacked the present so that the earth system updated herself into a New Reactive Earth, a cyborg Gaia. A conscious reactive earth that monitors and regulate how all inhabitants use resources & life-space, ensuring regeneration both temporally and spatially.

This premise led me to get acquainted with Life-Cycle Assessment as a model for the monitoring cyborg gaia.  In collaboration with Anna Björklund, Professor in Environmental Strategic Research I carried out several LCA’s on specific scenarios at SKH. Combined with transcorporeal (Alaimo, 2010) and sensory, embodied CO2 experiments, this world building resulted in shifted practices and tools (Persson, 2022) for low-carbon film and art practices. The story-world served as an interface to translate and apply neurodiverse knowledge into neurotypically structured research environments, allowing personal embodied experiments to be scaled up and implemented in organizational policies.

Our alter-life (Murphy, 2017) era demands us to rethink what research could be and how it can better serve life. In a world that recompose itself at an increasing rate, neuroqueer (Walker, 2021) perspectives are vital to widen the understanding of how our own protocols recompose what we research. To include them we need to allow personally customised practices and methods that kan attune to their specific affordances (Gibson, 2015). As in the case of this research; allowing a certain withdrawal into constructing parallel alternative worlds where these perspectives can be shielded while developed, and allowing more direct first-hand engagement with infrastructures, as opposed to through the fixed protocols of new public management.

This artistic research (Persson, 2023) demonstrates how neurominor methods and strategies can shift assumptions about reality and possibility. Embodied and performative world-building methods can tap into, safeguard, channel, and articulate perspectives not yet defined in the collective consciousness. It can also facilitate integration and application of this knowledge within neurotypically structured environments and structures, reshaping its protocols.





Bibliography:
Taylor, C & Ivinson , G (2013)  Material feminisms: new directions for education, Gender and Education
Alaimo, Stacey. (2010) Bodily Natures: Science, Environment and the Material Self. Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Persson, Lina. (2022)  elsa.film - carbon calculator for film production, www.elsa.film
Persson, Lina. (2023). Research poster Climate-Just Worldings. Stockholms University of the Arts. DiVA. urn:nbn:se:uniarts:diva-1560
Murphy, Michelle  (2017) Alterlife and Decolonial Chemical Relations », Cultural Anthropology, vol. 32, no 4, 2017, p. 494-503
Persson, Lina. (2023). New Reactive Earth Storyworld. Stockholms University of the Arts
Walker, Nick. (2021) Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities, Autonomous press.  
Gibson, James. (2015) The ecological approach to visual perception. Psychology Press.
Jenkins, Henry. (2006) Convergence culture. New York University Press.