On February 29, 2024, we submitted a project to the Chaos Computer Club competition for a grant for an artistic work depicting a utopian vision of a community in times of chaos.

For obvious reasons, we believe that TePeWu is creating and realizing just such a vision. So we asked ourselves what might be happening to our community in 2051 – and we intend to provide the answer in art form.

Below you’ll read how we answered the CCC questionnaire. If it resonates with you, join us!

What is your project title?

2051: SolarPunk Odyssey. Tales from a changing world.

Short summary?

A magical realism road trip story. As ecological succession unfolds, a solarpunk-ish community travels in search of a new place to live.

How do you imagine your project?

We will produce a narrative game, Nordic LARP style, in paper and digital form. Adding visual and sound elements will make it more engaging. For the CCC presentation, we will run a demo gameplay and provide assistance for people to try it on-site. All outcomes will be available in Polish and English, under a CC-BY-SA license.
The game will be available for free in electronic form, while there will also be print-on-demand hardcopy version available to buy.
After the CCC, we will keep developing and curating the game world as a digital commons, keeping it updated and available for everyone to explore and spawn their own  stories in any form they wish.
The world depicted will be based on the (periodically updated) scientific consensus on the situation around the years 2050-2100. We follow a “downstairs collapse” scenario and global warming around 2.5 Celsius. On top of it, every tale will add some “(techno)magical realism” layer.

There are two kinds of protagonists in this story:

• communities, striving to build their utopias in the changing world, interacting with others,
• and people, re-learning their attitudes and aptitudes according to the dynamics of the communities they join.

We will use the game world to help people cross the chasm between their dreams and the bleak reality, so they infuse light and color onto the darkness.

Why does your project fit the topic (CCC Utopias and Visions)?

The world is experiencing the consequences of a profound ecological disturbance triggered by the expansion of industrial civilisation. It means a lot of unpleasantries for us and other fellow beings. As a species, we have three options: to die out, migrate, or adapt.

Whichever option we choose (if we can), as self-conscious beings, we still have some “wiggle room” to do it in our style. Why not make our utopia out of it? 

Nonetheless, none of us can do it alone. We can transform our reality only through communities, through interactions within them, and their interactions with others.

We invite players to be a part of a community created in and shaped by the chaos of the multi-collapse. As a group of randomly gathered and detached from their previous environments people, they are chaotic themselves. In this stochastic situation, they must work together to create something new, orderly enough to be livable for them and other living beings.

What is the project team in TePeWu?

Petros – lifelong SciFi reader, I consider it the biggest thought laboratory we have. For decades involved in resilience and anarchist perspective on the civilisation collapse. Translator, political writer and commentator. Happy post-proletarian and fuckworker. Here I usurp responsibility for overall pushing things ahead.

Ludka – trained historian and editor, author of articles about history, environmental and social issues. I create dolls, draw and paint as a hobby. I have experience in basic web and graphic design. I used to play many RPG games. I’m thrilled to create something similar, using my skills, knowledge and experience.

Janek – soon-to-be graduate in English Studies. Precarious English tutor, translator and interpreter for psychotherapists and human rights NGOs, planning to start on a doctorate. Researcher and theorist of anarchist and autonomist thought and movement, in any spare time hiking enthusiastically in the mountain wilderness, writing, and playing the guitar.

What tale do you want to tell?

It is 2051. The ecological succession, triggered through synergy of dense energy sources and expansionist ideology, is unfolding. Multidimensional transformation of planetary environment is in full swing now, and nobody knows for sure what new shape is going to emerge at the other side.

For 25 years, a small community was living resilliently in XXX, supporting their neighbours and trying to find their way through the transformation process in a solrapunk-ish way. As the old world is crumbling and the new one still struggling to hatch, they are forced out of their place – and their comfort zone – and forced to search for a new place. Their goal now is to settle again, take part in shaping new world, raise next generation and pass the storyline forward.

As they travel, they meet various communities, struggling on their own. These interactions, and their influence upon the community and its members, are the essence of our story.

The whole composition is a classic road trip (journey?) story, in (techno)magic realism flavour. Our main focus is on communities as protagonists, and their members – their transformations through time an interactions.