“I like to think of utopianism as “effective social daydreaming” because utopia is associated with consciously imagining societies. Our imagination is always involved in creating reality. The opposition between the two, reality and the imaginary, is not a stark one; they're porous. What is imaginary tends to become real -- that’s a quote from the founder of Surrealism, André Breton. We daydream of a better world, and this could be a very vague daydream. The idea of utopianism that I'm putting forward in the book is not a detailed, orderly, rational model of the city utopia. It’s this free floating, desirous model of the body utopia, which is unfinished and imperfect. It's always in transformation. These dreams and daydreams that we have are guiding our actions, influencing our day-to-day behavior if we let them. Our imagination is always involved in creating reality. The opposition between the two, reality and the imaginary, is not a stark one; they're porous. I’ve just co-curated a major exhibition of Surrealism, reflecting on the 100 years since the Manifesto of Surrealism, so I'm very much in this moment where I'm trying to explain to the public the value of this movement.”

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 like to think of utopianism as “effective social daydreaming” because utopia is associated with consciously imagining societies. Our imagination is always involved in creating reality. The opposition between the two, reality and the imaginary, is not a stark one; they're porous. What is imaginary tends to become real -- that’s a quote from the founder of Surrealism, André Breton. We daydream of a better world, and this could be a very vague daydream. The idea of utopianism that I'm putting forward in the book is not a detailed, orderly, rational model of the city utopia. It’s this free floating, desirous model of the body utopia, which is unfinished and imperfect. It's always in transformation. These dreams and daydreams that we have are guiding our actions, influencing our day-to-day behavior if we let them. Our imagination is always involved in creating reality. The opposition between the two, reality and the imaginary, is not a stark one; they're porous. I’ve just co-curated a major exhibition of Surrealism, reflecting on the 100 years since the Manifesto of Surrealism, so I'm very much in this moment where I'm trying to explain to the public the value of this movement.”

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 that old saying, ‘blessed are the cracked for they shall let in the light.’ For a lot of people like myself, I think it's true that losing your mind can be a proportionate response to the climate crisis. Those of us with mental health issues are often branded as being in our own world. But paradoxically, being in our own world can actually be a result of being more connected to the outside world rather than less. And in the context of climate change, it may be fairer to describe people who fail to develop psychological symptoms as being in their own separate anthropocentric world, inattentive to the experiences of the billions of other human and nonhuman beings on the planet, unaffected by looming existential catastrophe. There are layers and layers of insulation made up of civilizational narratives that dislocate many people from climate chaos and those whose psyches buckle upon contact with this reality are the ones deemed mad. But this pathologizing is a defense mechanism employed by the civilized or by the dominant culture, which ends up subjugating those of us whose minds stray from accepted norms. There are lots of studies that show that certain forms of psychosis are actually a form of meaning-making for communities that feel like they have no sense of purpose. We've had generations and generations of trauma visited upon the human species by picking apart communities and our intimate relationships with nature. Especially since the 80s, picking apart our inability to even consider ourselves as part of society in a meaningful sense. That kind of pulling apart means that we're locked in quite individual and atomized spaces, where when something as massive as climate change starts to happen, people feel both responsible for it, and completely unable to do anything about it. That's not me saying that being depressed is the only objective kind of indicator for reality, but it's quite easy for the human species to underestimate or discount quite how significantly dangerous our situation is and people with depression are more able to see that with eyes unclouded by biases.”

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

The planet’s well-being unites us all, from ecosystems to societies, global systems to individual health. How is planetary health linked to mental health?

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.

“There's that old saying, ‘blessed are the cracked for they shall let in the light.’ For a lot of people like myself, I think it's true that losing your mind can be a proportionate response to the climate crisis. Those of us with mental health issues are often branded as being in our own world. But paradoxically, being in our own world can actually be a result of being more connected to the outside world rather than less. And in the context of climate change, it may be fairer to describe people who fail to develop psychological symptoms as being in their own separate anthropocentric world, inattentive to the experiences of the billions of other human and nonhuman beings on the planet, unaffected by looming existential catastrophe. There are layers and layers of insulation made up of civilizational narratives that dislocate many people from climate chaos and those whose psyches buckle upon contact with this reality are the ones deemed mad. But this pathologizing is a defense mechanism employed by the civilized or by the dominant culture, which ends up subjugating those of us whose minds stray from accepted norms. There are lots of studies that show that certain forms of psychosis are actually a form of meaning-making for communities that feel like they have no sense of purpose. We've had generations and generations of trauma visited upon the human species by picking apart communities and our intimate relationships with nature. Especially since the 80s, picking apart our inability to even consider ourselves as part of society in a meaningful sense. That kind of pulling apart means that we're locked in quite individual and atomized spaces, where when something as massive as climate change starts to happen, people feel both responsible for it, and completely unable to do anything about it. That's not me saying that being depressed is the only objective kind of indicator for reality, but it's quite easy for the human species to underestimate or discount quite how significantly dangerous our situation is and people with depression are more able to see that with eyes unclouded by biases.”

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

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

Richard Black spent 15 years as a science and environment correspondent for the BBC World Service and BBC News, before setting up the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. He now lives in Berlin and is the Director of Policy and Strategy at the global clean energy think tank Ember, which aims to accelerate the clean energy transition with data and policy. He is the author of The Future of Energy; Denied:The Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College London.

https://mhpbooks.com/books/the-future-of-energy
https://ember-climate.org/about/people/richard-black
https://ember-climate.org
www.therealpress.co.uk/?s=Richard+black

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

How and when will we transition to a clean energy future? How will the transition empower individuals and transform global power dynamics? How did China become the world’s first electrostate, leading the drive for renewable energy, and what can we learn from this?

Richard Black spent 15 years as a science and environment correspondent for the BBC World Service and BBC News, before setting up the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. He now lives in Berlin and is the Director of Policy and Strategy at the global clean energy think tank Ember, which aims to accelerate the clean energy transition with data and policy.

He is the author of The Future of Energy; Denied:The Rise and Fall of Climate Contrarianism, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at Imperial College London.

“So I rest on the contention that in a world that had already gone through the clean energy transition, Vladimir Putin could not have nurtured Europe’s dependence on Russia; could not have filled his war chests; could not have attempted to blackmail the EU into submission; and would not have been able, therefore, to attempt the invasion of Ukraine.

–The Future of Energy, p.76

“Environment of Peace: Security in a New Era of Risk is a report that I was fortunate enough to take part in writing a couple of years ago, courtesy of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The report is out there, available for download. It's a landmark report linking environmental destruction to conflict risk through all kinds of mechanisms and linking peace building and environmental restoration. The links, some of them are quite obvious, and others are a little bit more subtle. There are short-term things, and there are long-term things, and there's a role for international institutions, as well as national governments. So, in the short term, let's put a sticking plaster on the issue. The main recommendations that come out of the report, for example, environmental peace building, where you try and tackle an environmental issue alongside conflict resolution and so on, is something that could be used a lot more and United Nations agencies and other organizations can really take this on board and build this into all of their operations. But the longer-term stuff, the number one thing is to just get off fossil fuels. Because all the while we're using fossil fuels, we're going to be emitting carbon dioxide into the air and causing climate change to progress further.”

https://mhpbooks.com/books/the-future-of-energy
https://ember-climate.org/about/people/richard-black
https://ember-climate.org
www.therealpress.co.uk/?s=Richard+black

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

“I realized very young and very early on in my career that film does more than just inform and inspire and entertain. It can move people into action, whether it's personal or collective action. As a filmmaker, I've always made films about extraordinary women whose lives are faced with extenuating circumstances who've had adversity thrown at them and who've risen to the occasion. And when I began to look at Diane's story, for me, Diane is a fashion designer, but she's so much more. Her central ethos is woman before fashion, and we felt it was very important to take that ethos and weave it into the spine of our film, and make it about the woman.
In 2015, with A Girl in the River, I created a film that was about a young girl who had been shot by her father and her uncle because she had decided to get married on her own free will. They left her to die in a gunny sack in the river, and she survived. Sabah's story was deeply inspiring, because she wanted to send her father and uncle to jail, but in the end, she forgave them using a lacuna in the law. And when it was nominated for an Academy Award, we wrote a letter to the prime minister of Pakistan, and we used the film to educate and inform the government about the impact of the lacuna in that law, and how it was being misused. The film played a role in closing that and changing the law, which ensured that men who killed women in the name of honor would go to prison.”

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is an Oscar and Emmy award-winning Canadian-Pakistani filmmaker whose work highlights extraordinary women and their stories. She earned her first Academy Award in 2012 for her documentary Saving Face, about the Pakistani women targeted by brutal acid attacks. Today, Obaid-Chinoy is the first female film director to have won two Oscars by the age of 37. In 2023, it was announced that Obaid-Chinoy will direct the next Star Wars film starring Daisy Ridley. Her most recent project, co-directed alongside Trish Dalton, is the new documentary Diane von Fürstenberg: Woman in Charge, about the trailblazing Belgian fashion designer who invented the wrap dress 50 years ago. The film had its world premiere as the opening night selection at the 2024 Tribeca Festival on June 5th and premiered on June 25th on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ internationally. A product of Obaid-Chinoy's incredibly talented female filmmaking team, Woman in Charge provides an intimate look into Diane von Fürstenberg’s life and accomplishments and chronicles the trajectory of her signature dress from an innovative fashion statement to a powerful symbol of feminism.

www.hulu.com/movie/diane-von-furstenberg-woman-in-charge-95fb421e-b7b1-4bfc-9bbf-ea666dba0b02
https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/diane-von-furstenberg-woman-in-charge/1jrpX9AhsaJ6
https://socfilms.com

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