Before When We Were Separate is an experimental iterative writing project by Linsey Rendell and Jana Perković created for the digital exhibition After Progress, curated by Dr Martin Savransky (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Dr Craig Lundy (Nottingham Trent University) and supported by Unit of Play.
Linsey Rendell is a writer, photographer, and formerly contributing editor at SPACE10, a research and design lab on a mission to create a better everyday life for people and the planet. Food and farming are longstanding areas of inquiry that she probes on the page and in practice. She is from Naarm and is currently based in London.
Jana Perković is a former editor at SPACE10 and Assemble Papers in Naarm. She is currently based between Rijeka, Berlin, and Copenhagen.
Our individual and collective work is fuelled by concern with the continuing crisis of climate and inequity. Through visual visionary storytelling and speculative design, we imagine joyful, interdependent pathways forward.
Before When We Were Separate continues the research, writing, work, and spirit of adrienne maree brown, Octavia Butler, Walidah Imarisha, Daisy Ginsberg, Donna Haraway, Monica Byrne, Elena Bennett, Bruce Pascoe, Tyson Yunkaporta, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Claire G. Coleman, Ama Josephine Budge, Natasha Myers, and Indigenous knowledges and practices particularly those of First Nations Peoples in Australia. As we continue to read, learn, and unlearn, this reservoir expands, and our stories are shaped and reshaped anew, ever-prototyping plural and divergent emergent futures.
Abstract
Monica Byrne says "in 30 years, the world will be unrecognisable from what it looks like today. But how it will be unrecognisable is up to us. In this historical moment, science fiction literature has a very unique place in terms of helping us imagine a better world."[1]
With this in mind, the contributors engage visionary fiction as a tool for building positive, radical, but realistic visions of the future to regenerate our imaginations and inspire pathways towards a better Anthropocene.
We ask: if Progress is a boundless, linear, and upwards trajectory, can After Progress be joyfully limited; elastic, polycultural, and plural; balanced, planet scale, and compassionate?
We explore these definitions through interconnected stories of the land and ways of living that work within Mother Earth's limits — so she flourishes rather than suffers — and humans are "living not just to the point of survival, but to the point of pleasure".
The resulting iterative narrative takes the form of concatenated communications sent between women across generations, unfolding echoes between the far future and distant past.
Before When We Were Separate envisions a future where Nature has rights, community is a practice, and humans are doing the essential work to regenerate the Earth. The story centres Indigenous knowledges and practices to reframe humans' relationship with Nature and support multispecies flourishing.
References
SPACE10 Session: The Age of Emergency with Monica Byrne. May 5, 2020.
Radical Imagination: Visionary Fiction: Writing Our Future. Host Angela Glover Blackwell with Walidah Imarisha. April 9, 2020.
Daisy Ginsberg: Better (PhD). August 2017.
adrienne maree brown: the return of the pleasure activist. November 11, 2010.
Acknowledgement of Country
While we are currently dispersed across the world, we would like to acknowledge the Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land that we maintain a close connection with. We pay our deepest respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging, and acknowledge all Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples hold more than 120,000 years of knowledges, traditions, and culture, and we honour their continuing connection to these lands and waters. We would like to express our gratitude for their wisdom and guidance as we work collectively towards an equitable future that centres First Nations knowledges. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.