Recently, I had the opportunity to join an inspired group convened by visionary Bobby Fishkin to plan
Visionaries & Revolutionaries Day (Saturday, Jan 25) on the closing weekend of the Dissident Futures Exhibit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
We generated 100++ ideas in a brainstorm. Refined these into an action packed schedule including scenario planning, climate change meme healing, mapping collages, vision boards, building utopias, a revolution booth, a hold up, performances and more!
If you can't join in person, you can follow our tumblr of digital artifacts from V&R Day at Dissident Futures at YBCA.
Visionaries & Revolutionaries Day (Saturday, Jan 25) on the closing weekend of the Dissident Futures Exhibit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
We generated 100++ ideas in a brainstorm. Refined these into an action packed schedule including scenario planning, climate change meme healing, mapping collages, vision boards, building utopias, a revolution booth, a hold up, performances and more!
If you can't join in person, you can follow our tumblr of digital artifacts from V&R Day at Dissident Futures at YBCA.
A call to Visionaries, Revolutionaries & Dissident Futurists
Please join us at Dissident Futures at YBCA on Saturday, Jan 25
12:00 Kickoff
“Make your mark, share your vision-- the start a revolution booth” led by Kyle Stewart & Kate Michi Ettinger [Lobby 12 - 6]
- Utopias: Lost & Found: Co-create the future of Utopias Lost and Found. Collaboratively create the future of society in the lobby of the YCBA. Use your imagination build your Utopia and watch your vision change between entering the show and exiting the building.
- Share your vision-- start a revolution: Share your vision for humanity and the revolution that will help us get there. In < 5 minutes create and publish your story, share it and find co-conspirators to ignite your revolution
“Break-down Barriers to Break-Out Your Revolution” Booth led by Tara Samiy, Marlena Zahm and Amanda Leitner
- Drop in to create vision boards from 12 - 2 in Conf 1
1:00
“Stories of the Future-- a scenario-planning workshop” led by Lina Constantinovici
- 2 Hr Workshop in YAAW that will develop vignettes for the 4:30 finale performance
- 2 hr Workshop in Conf 1 ... More Details: FB Event for the CauseRoot Hold Up
2:00
“Cut and paste your future: a collage” led by Bobby Fishkin & Maya Belitski
- Drop into to collage a map of your future from 2-4ish
3:00
“Climate Change Meme Healing” led by Lazlo Karafiath (90 minutes)
“Cut and paste your future: a collage” led by Bobby Fishkin & Maya Belitski (Ongoing drop in 2 - 4:30)
4:00
- YBCA special performance by Myra Melford and Ian Winters in the Galleries 4-5pm
4:30 Finale Performance: Visions of the Future in the Screening Room
- The day's public V&R activities will conclude with a performance of Visions of the Future, produced by Lina Constantinovici
- Followed by a tour of YBCA
Hashtag for the day: #V&RFutures
Follow our Tumblr for digital artifacts: vratybca.tumblr.com
You may RSVP on our FB event, or message an organizer to join the V&R guest list! Please bring co-conspirator friends!
This public program is organized in conjunction with the group exhibition Dissident Futures which is currently on view at YBCA until February 2, 2014. Dissident Futures is an investigation into possible alternative futures, particularly those that question or overturn conventional notions of innovation in biological, social, environmental, and technological structures.
Visionaries and Revolutionaries is a creative community with members representing a diversity of disciplines, who come together to share the ways in which they solve social problems that they care about in imaginative ways. Through this series, social innovators can explore the intersection of their aspirations for world change and learn from each other's diverse backgrounds in art, science, and technology.
Schedule Confirmed. For details on the workshops click on Read More.
Detailed Descriptions:
Kickoff: Bobby Fishkin interviews superlative visionaries and revolutionaries 12-1 in the Screening Room
“Make your mark, share your vision-- the start a revolution booth” Ongoing in the Lobby
“Stories of the Future-- a scenario-planning workshop producing vignettes to be performed at end of day” led by Lina Constantinovici (2 Hr Workshop) in YAAW
“Break-down Barriers to Break-Out Your Revolution” Booth led by Tara Samiy
MakeSense Hold Ups led by Chris Geraghty and MakeSense Gangsters in the Screening Room
“Cut and paste your future: a collage” led by Bobby Fishkin & Maya Belitski
Climate Change Meme Healing Group for friends suffering from ClimateMeme PTSD in Conf 2
From our meme research we know what the ClimateChange meme does to the human psyche. It creates anxiety, loneliness, fear, elitism, panic. Now we can begin the healing process. In this group we will help friends who got the ClimateChange virus (not only climate activists) to heal from the trauma of living with this idea.
More about Meme Trauma and Meme Healing
When we are exposed to a meme infection that our mind is not immune to we suffer traumatic event. The meme creates what is essentially a memetic revolution in our mind: our mind is changed in an instant. And can never be the same again.
This is my friend and co-founder Joe Brewer talking about his trauma: 'There I was, age of 12, sitting in a classroom and keen to learn more about how the Earth’s climate has changed throughout history, when it hit me — everyone I know and love is at risk of annihilation from the spewing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This was a horrific thought. I got scared. And it never went away.'
Most of us have been traumatized by dangerous ideas that change our mindset. They demand our attention every day, cause us to focus on them, constantly repeating and evolving them in our mind, endlessly, to the point that we are not even sure if that is the reality or not. Sometimes they even give us nightmares and leaves us, their victims, in a state of constant anxiety. This is memetic trauma and many of us live with memetic post-traumatic stress disorder. They alter how our brains process information. We live with it as a condition that only goes away after an extended period of memetic healing. If, that is, it goes away at all.
Back to Joe again: 'For ten years now I have reorganized my entire life around this looming threat, constantly reminded of the crisis others couldn’t see and unable to focus on life’s little pleasures. I distanced myself from family, moving thousands of miles away to work as a political activist. I abandoned my passion for scholarly learning by leaving the Ph.D. program I was in to go off and “save the world” from imminent destruction.'
The first step toward memetic healing is to reveal our own memetic traumas to ourselves and to catch hold of the viruses that contaminate our thinking. As any exercise of consciousness it is difficult, since we are using our infected minds to spot the infection, but it is possible. We simply cannot be effective at transitioning our global civilization toward a state of thriving when we are damaged goods ourselves. Healing must come first.
Finale Performance: Visions of the Future (20 min performance at 4:30 in Screening Room) followed by YBCA tour
Kickoff: Bobby Fishkin interviews superlative visionaries and revolutionaries 12-1 in the Screening Room
“Make your mark, share your vision-- the start a revolution booth” Ongoing in the Lobby
- Utopias: Lost & Found: Co-create the future of Utopias Lost and Found. Collaboratively create the future of society in the lobby of the YCBA. Use your imagination build your Utopia and watch your vision change between entering the show and exiting the building.
- Share your vision-- start a revolution: Share your vision for humanity and the revolution that will help us get there. In < 5 minutes create and publish your story, share it and find co-conspirators to ignite your revolution!
- Utopias: Lost & Found: Co-create the future of Utopias Lost and Found. Collaboratively create the future of society in the lobby of the YCBA. Use your imagination build your Utopia and watch your vision change between entering the show and exiting the building.
“Stories of the Future-- a scenario-planning workshop producing vignettes to be performed at end of day” led by Lina Constantinovici (2 Hr Workshop) in YAAW
“Break-down Barriers to Break-Out Your Revolution” Booth led by Tara Samiy
- Drop into space to create a vision board from 1 - 3 in Conference Rm 1
- Bring art supplies, magazines, & journal
- Creating visions boards with coaching to identify and transcend barriers to realizing your revolution
MakeSense Hold Ups led by Chris Geraghty and MakeSense Gangsters in the Screening Room
- Hold Ups are a 2 hr creativity workshop to help solve the challenges of a social entrepreneur. This Hold Up is part of Worldwide Hold Up Day with Hold Ups to celebrate MakeSense's 3rd birthday! 2 Hr Workshop 2-4
“Cut and paste your future: a collage” led by Bobby Fishkin & Maya Belitski
- Drop into space to collage a map of your revolution from 2 - 4 in Conf 1
- Bring art supplies, magazines & used maps
Climate Change Meme Healing Group for friends suffering from ClimateMeme PTSD in Conf 2
From our meme research we know what the ClimateChange meme does to the human psyche. It creates anxiety, loneliness, fear, elitism, panic. Now we can begin the healing process. In this group we will help friends who got the ClimateChange virus (not only climate activists) to heal from the trauma of living with this idea.
More about Meme Trauma and Meme Healing
When we are exposed to a meme infection that our mind is not immune to we suffer traumatic event. The meme creates what is essentially a memetic revolution in our mind: our mind is changed in an instant. And can never be the same again.
This is my friend and co-founder Joe Brewer talking about his trauma: 'There I was, age of 12, sitting in a classroom and keen to learn more about how the Earth’s climate has changed throughout history, when it hit me — everyone I know and love is at risk of annihilation from the spewing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This was a horrific thought. I got scared. And it never went away.'
Most of us have been traumatized by dangerous ideas that change our mindset. They demand our attention every day, cause us to focus on them, constantly repeating and evolving them in our mind, endlessly, to the point that we are not even sure if that is the reality or not. Sometimes they even give us nightmares and leaves us, their victims, in a state of constant anxiety. This is memetic trauma and many of us live with memetic post-traumatic stress disorder. They alter how our brains process information. We live with it as a condition that only goes away after an extended period of memetic healing. If, that is, it goes away at all.
Back to Joe again: 'For ten years now I have reorganized my entire life around this looming threat, constantly reminded of the crisis others couldn’t see and unable to focus on life’s little pleasures. I distanced myself from family, moving thousands of miles away to work as a political activist. I abandoned my passion for scholarly learning by leaving the Ph.D. program I was in to go off and “save the world” from imminent destruction.'
The first step toward memetic healing is to reveal our own memetic traumas to ourselves and to catch hold of the viruses that contaminate our thinking. As any exercise of consciousness it is difficult, since we are using our infected minds to spot the infection, but it is possible. We simply cannot be effective at transitioning our global civilization toward a state of thriving when we are damaged goods ourselves. Healing must come first.
Finale Performance: Visions of the Future (20 min performance at 4:30 in Screening Room) followed by YBCA tour
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