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Utopian Life

Live utopias? For the discursive and performative negotiation of alternative life and future designs at festivals

 

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How do we want to live together in the future? How do we imagine tomorrow's society to be sustainable? Questions like these condense in the context of current crisis diagnoses - including: climate crisis, financial crisis or European crisis - in public discourses and make the future (all) present: in media discourses, political debates, current protest movements (such as "Fridays for Future") and the like. Ä. the future is forecast, planned and researched. Scientifically ignored so far emergent, popular-cultural formats that design alternative futures and - according to the initial thesis of the project - make them tangible in the here and now: Utopia festivals, which are called "Days of Utopia", "Move Utopia" or "Utopival" “Do business, want to design, materialize and try out a good life beyond contemporary society during the festival days. Formulated in theses, the festivals function as non-institutionalized, temporary spaces for negotiation and opportunities - as laboratories - for a good life beyond predetermined (everyday) structures and conventions. Various church organizations, ecovillages or activist groups appear as organizers of these rural, small-scale festivals in Germany. In this way, designs for a good life from a wide variety of social contexts - denominational, anarchist-experimental or activist perspectives - become visible and ethnographically accessible. The project makes the comparative research approach of cultural anthropology productive by comparing from an actor-centered perspective how which ideas of a good life in different social contexts within Germany are negotiated, produced and tested discursively and performatively

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Ina Kuhn