Solarpunk as an Aesthetics of Radical-Ecological Utopias

Ecological crisis, local military conflicts, spreading of authoritarianism and surveillance technologies - all these problems are becoming global, which reinforces the foggy image of the future. Throughout the history of mankind, many images and projects of it have been invented. Some of them have been reflections of the best hopes - utopias; others have been expressions of the worst fears - dystopias. And while there are a lot of plots and aesthetics of technocratic non- ecological future, there are almost no images of the future with solved modern global problems. Nevertheless, the ecological crisis, political and economic problems cannot be solved without developing alternatives to the contemporary order of things. These alternatives require a new aesthetics based on radical ideas of freedom for human and non-human beings, combining separate existing strategies of ecological and political struggle, ecological technologies, elements of infrastructure, alternative political and economic projects. The aim of the current research is to investigate the principles on which the idea of solarpunk develops, and how its aesthetics can promote liberating ecological and political ideas that allow for a reconfiguration of human relationships with nature and technology for a free and ecological future. This study traces why solarpunk transcends the science fiction genre and becomes a movement that combines ideas of practical utopianism, radical ecology, the philosophy of new materialism, the inventive spirit, as well as a particular attention to local cultural and social specifics, ecological approaches to technology, and the development of alternative infrastructure. However, the complexity of solarpunk generates some contradictory tendencies in it, which are also identified, analyzed, and criticized in this research, allowing to subsequently overcome these contradictions, giving the concept of solarpunk an even more practice-oriented character without neglecting its philosophical, activist, and aesthetic components.