“I'd like young people not to limit their world to content they can find on the internet. I think that's a real danger. Many of my students say, “well, I haven't thought about this,” “I haven't read this because I didn't find it online for free.” I want them to remember that not all knowledge is digitized, that much remains elusive to the nets of the internet even in its effort to make knowledge accessible on one platform, to create this kind of enormous encyclopedia. And in this quest, we also reduce the past to the present. The past is more virtually present in our lives than for any other generation, because it's available online in the form of textual and audiovisual archives. This proximity actually affects the past's pastness. The appearance of distance is lost in the digital reproduction, whether it's paintings, or archival documents, or photographs. I think it's erroneous to think that everything that is extant from the past is at our fingertips and that we don't have to go out and look for it. So what I would like to pass on is curiosity; curiosity about the past shouldn't stop at the digital. It's tempting to think that all the answers are already there online because it's so vast, this web we are spinning, but that’s not the case.”

S. D. Chrostowska is professor of humanities at York University, Canada. She is the author of several books, among them Permission, The Eyelid, A Cage for Every Child, and, most recently, Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics. Her essays have appeared in such venues as Public Culture, Telos, Boundary 2, and The Hedgehog Review. She also coedits the French surrealist review Alcheringa and is curator of the 19th International Exhibition of Surrealism, Marvellous Utopia, which runs from July to September 2024 in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France.

https://profiles.laps.yorku.ca/profiles/sylwiac/

www.sup.org/books/title/?id=33445
https://chbooks.com/Books/T/The-Eyelid
https://ciscm.fr/en/merveilleuse-utopie

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

As Surrealism turns 100, what can it teach us about the importance of dreaming and creating a better society? Will we wake up from the consumerist dream sold to us by capitalism and how would that change our ideas of utopia?

S. D. Chrostowska is professor of humanities at York University, Canada. She is the author of several books, among them Permission, The Eyelid, A Cage for Every Child, and, most recently, Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics. Her essays have appeared in such venues as Public Culture, Telos, Boundary 2, and The Hedgehog Review. She also coedits the French surrealist review Alcheringa and is curator of the 19th International Exhibition of Surrealism, Marvellous Utopia, which runs from July to September 2024 in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France.

“I'd like young people not to limit their world to content they can find on the internet. I think that's a real danger. Many of my students say, “well, I haven't thought about this,” “I haven't read this because I didn't find it online for free.” I want them to remember that not all knowledge is digitized, that much remains elusive to the nets of the internet even in its effort to make knowledge accessible on one platform, to create this kind of enormous encyclopedia. And in this quest, we also reduce the past to the present. The past is more virtually present in our lives than for any other generation, because it's available online in the form of textual and audiovisual archives. This proximity actually affects the past's pastness. The appearance of distance is lost in the digital reproduction, whether it's paintings, or archival documents, or photographs. I think it's erroneous to think that everything that is extant from the past is at our fingertips and that we don't have to go out and look for it. So what I would like to pass on is curiosity; curiosity about the past shouldn't stop at the digital. It's tempting to think that all the answers are already there online because it's so vast, this web we are spinning, but that’s not the case.”

https://profiles.laps.yorku.ca/profiles/sylwiac/
www.sup.org/books/title/?id=33445
https://chbooks.com/Books/T/The-Eyelid
https://ciscm.fr/en/merveilleuse-utopie

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“There's a whole section in my book about tips and advice. One of the ways that I try to maintain a feeling of safety while also not collapsing into a state of passivity, and it's taken a very long time for me to learn this, but it’s being forgiving with myself. One of the people who I write about a lot in the book is Jennifer Uchandu, a Nigerian climate activist and mental health activist who sets up an organization called The Eco-Anxiety in Africa Project. She talks about needing to remind herself constantly. Her test is not whether she's doing enough, it's whether she's doing her best. And doing her best doesn't mean doing as much as she possibly can, it means having the right balance of self care and action. Recently I've been really struggling with insomnia because I've still got quite bad nerve pain from my surgeries. And it sounds so simple and I used to get annoyed at these things, but just breathing. You know, deep breathing and kind of breathing into my back. Spending time in nature is also helpful. It can be quite hard for me because my mobility isn't always great on my prosthetics or if I'm in a wheelchair, but I swim a lot. And I draw a lot. One of the things that's been really amazing is that over the last few years, me and my friends have gotten into the habit of calling one another as first points of contact, not just in crisis, but if we've had a tricky day.”

Charlie Hertzog Young is a researcher, writer and award-winning activist. He identifies as a “proudly mad bipolar double amputee” and has worked for the New Economics Foundation, the Royal Society of Arts, the Good Law Project, the Four Day Week Campaign and the Centre for Progressive Change, as well as the UK Labour Party under three consecutive leaders. Charlie has spoken at the LSE, the UN and the World Economic Forum. He studied at Harvard, SOAS and Schumacher College and has written for The Ecologist, The Independent, Novara Media, Open Democracy and The Guardian. He is the author of Spinning Out: Climate Change, Mental Health and Fighting for a Better Future.

https://charliehertzogyoung.me
https://footnotepress.com/books/spinning-out/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast