Europarama

The "other now" described by Varoufakis could exist somewhere in a fissure of the time-space continuum. In this dimension, capitalism (as we know it) is dead, but a liberal and democratic society is thriving. Yanis Varoufakis is an economist, politician and a former Minister of Finance of Greece, member of the Greek Parliament, co-founder of the European Transnational Party "DiEM25", and science fiction writer. This episode is hosted by Giuseppe Porcaro, and co-hosted with Alberto Cottica,...

In this final episode, Giuseppe Porcaro, Alberto Cottica, and the Architect of Witness, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, talk about to the history of Witness, and wrap up the whole season. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research by building the world of Witness. Witness is a fictional city floating in a post-climate...

We explore the fictional academic discipline of aethnography - the study of the behavior of humans engaged in mutual interaction - which has a solid tradition in the universe of Witness. Giuseppe and Alberto are joined by Amelia Hassoun, senior researcher and lead ethnographer at Edgeryders. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the...

In this episode, Giuseppe and Alberto, together with guest Hugi Ásgeirsson, sail through a sector of the fictional world Witness known as Avantgrid. Hugi is one of the co-directors of Edgeryders and director of blivande - a participatory culture hub in Stockholm. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research by...

The Covenant is religious institution Distrikt of Witness, tracing its history back to the grand powers of Roman Catholicism. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research by building the world of Witness. Witness is a fictional city floating in a post-climate change Planet Earth, where people are organised by...

Hygge is the first Distrikt of Witness. It was initially meant to be the " nervous system of Witness." The political history of Hygge begins with the founding of Witness itself. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research by building the world of Witness. Witness is a fictional city floating in a post-climate...

In this episode, we sail to the Witness - an open-source fictional world exploring the future of economy. Giuseppe Porcaro and Alberto Cottica, your guides for the season, along with Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, a science fiction author and Architect of Witness, take you there. For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab as they had an incredible idea. Instead of writing academic papers, they decided to channel out-of-the box economic research...

For this season, Europarama joins forces with Edgeryders and their Science Fiction Economics Lab by building the world of Witness - a fictional city floating in a post-climate change Planet Earth. On Witness, people are organised by districts, each experimenting a different social contract and economic model. Witness is an open-source fictional world. You are encouraged to contribute to its making or to freely use it for your artistic or research projects. Join in:...

In this episode we explore, with Julijonas Urbonas, the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, the so-called Karman Line, at 100 Km above us. What new politics, culture, and art can be conceived when the law of physics as we know them get completely subverted? This episode was originally foreseen to be recorded live, in the frame of the Culture Forum of Kaunas, European Capital of Culture 2022. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the Forum has been moved online. It takes place on...

Why should it be unscientific to think about the future? Why shouldn’t we be allowed to take a critical scientific stance in thinking about the future? There is no contradiction in being scientific and turning towards the future—towards what is not yet known. Wouldn’t it be scientific, in the best sense of the word, if researchers examined utopias and investigated, with the best available knowledge, why they cannot become true? The Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society...

Pandemics have been a running theme throughout science fiction and many cross-genre movies, from zombies to aliens. But what happens when Europe (and the world) has become a huge set of a pandemic, and it is not a science fiction, even if it closely looks like it? Giuseppe Porcaro is in conversation with Anthony Straeger, the director of the Berlin Sci-fi Film Festival, and Isabella Hermann, political scientist and expert of A.I. and ethics. A (partial) watch list of the movies we speak...

Discover how the last King of the Belgians becomes the first Emperor of Europe. Giuseppe Porcaro meets film director Jessica Woodworth to discuss her latest movie, The Barefoot Emperor. After suffering a gunshot wound to the ear during an unfortunate incident in Sarajevo, the King of the Belgians wakes up on a Croatian island, once Tito’s famed summer residence. While he tries to escape from the island to save his Kingdom, an envoy arrives announcing that the King has been chosen to become...

In this special episode Giuseppe Porcaro, Alberto Cottica and Nadia EN discuss the Science Fiction Economics Lab on November 11th from 14:30 to 19:00 (with after party) in Brussels, Belgium. Be among the first 4 people to share this episode from the Europarama Facebook page and win a free ticket for the keynote of Cory Doctorow. ______________________________________________________ The Science Fiction Economics Lab will bring together SF authors, economists, technologists, activists and...

In this season finale, Giuseppe Porcaro looks back at the experiment of Europarama together with a stellar line-up of contributors that join in to explore the value of science fiction as a method to dive into Europe's futures. Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their...

We are around the time when we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Moon landing. And it is not a coincidence that for this latest space time exploration of europarama we would like to take you all in an interplanetary journey. And imagine a Europe that expands towards the outer space. After all, the science fiction dreams of going to the other sky objects started here in Europe, in 1865 with Jules Verne’s "From the Earth to the Moon". Even if even Jules Verne imagined that the first...

Where politics and democracy are heading into the future? It is a theme that has run throughout the history of science fiction. Something that already in 1921, Yevgeny Zamyatin tried to imagine in his novel “We”, for example, and later developed in different directions by Orwell, Huxley and the likes. The following quote from “We” recalls the tone and the imagery of these reflections about the future of democracy, back in the past. A sort of archeology of the Future. *It goes without...

This episode of Europarama has been recorded at the University of Roskilde in Denmark, during the workshop fEUtures: science fiction and the future of Europe on 4th June 2019. During the workshop academics and science fiction authors discussed science fiction as a methodological tool in European Studies. Giuseppe Porcaro had the chance to have a long conversation with Michal Hvorecky and discuss the Europe of the future described in his latest novel, Troll (2017), where trolling factories...

Jacque Fresco was an American futurist and self-described social engineerb he directed the Venus Project and advocated global implementation of a socioeconomic system which he referred to as a "resource-based economy". The Venus Project proposes an alternative vision of what the future can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable new world civilization. It calls for a straightforward redesign of our culture in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty,...

Uchronia refers to a hypothetical or fictional time-period of our world, in contrast to altogether fictional lands or worlds. A concept similar to alternate history but different in the manner that uchronic times are not easily defined, mainly placed in some distant or unspecified point in time, sometimes reminiscent of a constructed world. In this episode Giuseppe Porcaro , Julie Novakova and Vilma Kadlečková experiment with the genre and they explore a universe where noble families still...

People who do a lot of gardening probably know what “rhizome” is in botanical terms. It is a kind of plant that pops out of the ground over an expanding area, giving the impression that many separate plants are emerging in close proximity to one another, but in fact these ostensibly individual “plants” are parts of one big plant, and are interconnected under the ground. It has a distinct philosophical meaning, too, which is associated with the famous French duo, Felix Guattari and Gilles...