Initially the idea of Alterotopia started as a concept for creative writing, where the thought experiment was: what if we tell a story not from the perspective of human actors, but rather from the perspective of a place, like a valley, a building or a rock in the ocean, where we use the longevity of this place to tell a story of how things have changed, and how things have remained the same, over a long period of time. Paradoxically, by seeing from the perspective of things that seem relatively static to us, we might see how volatile and changeable the world around us really is. We might see a static world become fluid and liquid.

This idea has evolved into a broader desire to nurture a celebratory practice of thinking-, feeling- and making-with through creative encounters that resonate against the grain. The ‘with’ in these encounters refers to both:

1) places of change, soils, landscapes and temporalities that invite us to move away from human centred perspectives and deepen our conceptualisation of agency, transformative power, change and belonging.

2) creative practices that inspire and nurture radically different ways of relating to the earth and each other.

An Alterotopean approach

Taking a speculative leap ahead, we might imagine an Alterotopian approach to be about entangling our longing for and prefiguration of the otherwise, with specific places of change, soils, matters, landscapes, and temporalities. An inherently relational approach, in which strengthening the contingent ties and relations that propel us forward is equally important: to deepen our understanding of what is at stake and find ways to dance with the trouble together.

“while we may all ultimately be connected to one another, the specificity and proximity of connections matters – who we are bound up with and in what ways. Life and death happen inside these relationships.” T. van Dooren, Flight Ways.