The Alchemy of Crisis: November at Perspectiva
Community events this month and a new film
This November at Perspectiva, we’ll be playing with forms of transformation that might be possible across various facets and types of ‘crisis.’ While some thinkers — including our own Jonathan Rowson — are tussling over the terminology of the prefixes of crisis (poly-, perma-, meta-), we’re also curious about what might emerge when crisis is no longer a limiting frame on our thought and perception. Can we alchemically shift from polycrisis, permacrisis, metacrisis, into ‘no-crisis’, or is that utopian thinking gone awry?
Our community events and conversations this month will explore how to speak about, live with, and act in a moment of multiple, interlocking crises. And, thinking beyond our current imaginal constraints, how would our conversations and actions change if ‘crisis’ as vocabulary were replaced with something else?
Highlights of the month include an event with the social thinker, writer, and speaker Dougald Hine (20 Nov) in conversation with Jonathan Rowson, and our first online Anti-Debate (8 Nov). Our first three events of the month will be free and open to all. The following events will be available to members of our new, growing Perspectiva Community. To learn more about the community and join click below:
November 13: ‘Prefixing the World’ with Jonathan Rowson
4pm UK / 5pm CEST / 11am EST / 8am PST
On 13th November, Jonathan Rowson will present on his recent essay, Prefixing the World: Why the polycrisis is a permacrisis, which is actually a metacrisis, which is not really a crisis at all. During this event Jonathan will share the journey of his thinking and why he feels it is so important that we find the right framing for this historical moment. How we think about and relate to the metacrisis - and the words we use that shape our shared understanding - may itself be generative of our current predicament. Can we move beyond crisis and live in away that prefigures the next world?
November 20: ‘At Work in the Ruins’, Dougald Hine in conversation with Jonathan Rowson
4pm UK / 5pm CEST / 11am EST / 8am PST
On 20th November, Dougald Hine will join Jonathan Rowson to further explore the state of our world and how we can respond. Hailed as “profound” “far-reaching” and “mind-altering”, Dougald’s recent publication, At Work in the Ruins, is about how we find our bearings and how we must look beyond scientific and technological fixes to respond to the challenges of our time. According to Dougald, “…the world is deep in trouble, deeper than we know how to talk about. I also see a danger that, when we talk about “taking climate change seriously”, this increasingly comes to justify the project of making our living planet and its inhabitants into an object of technological management and control. Those of us who want no part in such a project will need to find other ways of talking and other paths worth taking.”
*Join the Perspectiva Community to attend this event.
November 27: ‘Connection, Inquiry & Praxis’, facilitated by Michael Bready & Leigh Biddlecome
4pm UK / 5pm CEST / 11am EST / 8am PST
Perspectiva’s Leigh Biddlecome and Michael Bready will facilitate a session to collectively explore the shifts in perception needed to move from stuckness into new possibilities. This session will include a mixture of contemplative and conversational inquiry both in small breakout rooms and and the larger group with the aim of uncovering the wisdom latent within the group.
*Join the Perspectiva Community to attend this event.
What else is happening in November
Tuesday 7 November: Culture Club (rescheduled from 31 Oct) — (1pm UK / 2pm CET / 8am EST)
Perspectiva’s Culture Club is a monthly gathering to discuss a cultural artefact (book, poem, film, music) and discover what it reveals about ourselves and the times we are living in. On November 7th, Leigh Biddlecome will facilitate a group discussion on Emily Berry’s poem “(my Love Was Two Pieces Put Together)”. This session will last one hour.
Wednesday 8 November: Anti-Debate (4pm UK / 5pm CET / 11am EST)
The antidebate is an experiment in fostering better conversations on matters of real importance: political, economic, social and ecological. It is an initiative developed by Perspectiva to be an antidote to the trend in public debate towards polarisation and point-scoring. This will be Perspectiva’s first online antidebate. We’ll send more information in the coming days, but you can register your spot now. This event will last 3 hours.
Thursday 23 November: Leading from Confusion with Jonathan Rowson (4pm UK / 5pm CET / 11am EST)
In these one-hour sessions Jonathan Rowson builds a conversation with the Perspectiva community using a current source of confusion as the starting point for a collective inquiry.
Tuesday 28 November: Culture Club (4pm UK / 5pm CET / 11am EST)
Recently released: ‘Living in the Metacrisis with Jonathan Rowson’ by filmmaker Katie Teague
Katie Teague’s recent film features Jonathan Rowson and explores what it means to live within a context of metacrisis. As he says in the opening sequence, the ‘meta’ in the metacrisis isn’t just another concept — it’s alive, ‘it’s your daily experience of the world falling apart, it’s your incredulity to how weird everything is becoming….the metacrisis is also in the way you make sense of the world, the way you feel it and emote in relation to it.’
If you read Jonathan’s ‘Prefixing the World’ in September and are curious to find a more visually-oriented entry into his thinking on the metacrisis, this film offers exactly that.
You can explore more of Katie’s work and support her here.