Co-emerging Economies by Olga Mink & Reon Brand (eds.)
Co-emerging Economies: Exploring radical perspectives on post-anthropocentric economies is a publication by Lecturis, 2021. The book is a collection of poems, thoughts, illustrations, stories, discussions, and live sessions from Baltan Laboratories workshops reflecting on the need for a new economic future.
Co-emerging Economies was an online storytelling workshop to inspire people and to unravel what could radical economic change look like. Participants were invited to develop and share ideas collectively during this intense online session to co-develop narratives and ideas through fictional world-building, speculative fabulation, and interactive brainstorming sessions.
The aim of the workshops was to contribute to two narratives in the co-emerging futures, inspired by the post-anthropocentric view; a perspective where the human identity is diffused into a larger eco-system. Here, we distinguish two fundamentally different sub-directions:
• Gaia is the eco-centric direction, in which we see ourselves as an integral part of the natural ecosystem (and not on top of nature).
• Etheria is the sentio-centric direction, in which we value intelligence (sentience) as the ultimate virtue.
The publication interrogates those two opposing perspectives about “kinship” in an economy which no longer puts the need of humans first. How will the relationships we develop affect the way we deem nature, other species, technology, and even our own bodies?
The structure is divided into four parts: the introduction, Gaia and Etheria perspectives, the workshops brainstorming sessions, and the conclusion. The color palette follows the cover illustration, with light pink being the main color for the general chapters, the binding thread, and the inside cover color. Other colors like blue, green, and orange are used as spreads to divide the chapters. The book is pocket size, featuring various types of texts, like more extended essays, quotes, poems, and statements made by participants.
Graphik from Commercial type is a brand typeface for the Baltan identity. In this publication, I decided to use it for massive quests going across the spreads and essays. It is juxtaposed by Editorial New from Pangram Pangram, to add playfulness and to add contrast between the text forms. This precise and elegant narrow serif is used for longform copy. As the heavier weights have more personality, they were used to make statements, such as titles and quotes.
This project is an initiative by Baltan Laboratories in collaboration with Philips Experience Design & Avans University of Applied Sciences
Chapters are written by Reon Brand, Godelieve Spaas, Lisanne Buik, René van Peer, and Olga Mink, as well as contributions by workshop participants; Cynthia Hathaway, Bea Xu, Yannik Güldner, Elise Talgorn, Michal Mitro
Contributing artists: Leif Czakai, Sunjoo Lee, Sixtine Blandin, and Cecille Parnasse are responsible for depicting the discussions in compelling drawings
Edited by Olga Mink and Reon Brand
Text editing and translations: Radboud University Vertaal and Marisa Miller
Graphic design: Gabriela Baka
