REIMAGINING POSSIBILITIES
SUSTAINABLE KNOWLEDGE
UNCOVER FORGOTTEN HISTORIES AND EPHEMERA FROM OUR REALITY
Written and compiled by The Parallel Effect's transdisciplinary and archival researcher, Eloise Chandler.
Many of our multiverse imaginings have been influenced by archival research carried out across international, national, organisational, community and activist repositories.
Throughout our bouts of archive fever, we have identified realms of forgotten material pertinent to understanding today’s climate crisis.
We’ve also “re-discovered” many documents that articulate forgotten ideas and movements for change, which - without certain spoilers - may have resulted in a very different today.
Such “discoveries” have prompted the team at The Parallel Effect to question and think about what sustainability means from the perspective of knowledge and ideas.
So much of today’s treatments of knowledge of climate change and sustainable practice are cast ahistorically as the stuff of “now” or the very recent past. Too frequently “new” ideas and actions fail to cite the intellectual, social, cultural, scientific and organisational labour of those that preceded them. Even mainstream ideas from the past are redacted from contemporary discussions of where we are, what we are doing, why we are doing it, and what we could do better or differently.
As we have grappled with this disposable economy of memory – perhaps another symptom of the inroads made by climate change denialism – we’ve started to think of how we can apply a more sustainable approach to knowledge in our creative practice.
Inside the Multiverse Museum - part of the 'Enter The Parallel Effect' experience - we have curated intersectional exhibits made up of some of these forgotten histories from our reality, alongside those from alternate timelines.
We are incredibly excited to be able to share some of these extraordinary artefacts with you (everything from handwritten letters through to top secret dossiers!) and would also encourage you to explore the archives which hold them whilst contemplating the extraordinary histories and possibilities they suggest.