𝑮𝒓æ𝒏 𝑹∞𝒎
2020
Domestic environment and biblio-installation
Books, zines, vinyl records, tabletop games, ambient sound and light, live foliage, antique furniture, textiles, interactive audiovisual sculpture

Græn R∞m is a public living room for utopian (re)creation. Guests are invited to read, rest, play, and socialize in a cozy, communal environment.

The project takes its name from three different concepts of ‘the green room.’

1. In theater, music, and entertainment: a space to relax and socialize backstage; a room for artists and guests to prepare before, and retire after, a performance.

2. In the White House: a decorated state parlor used for intimate receptions and tea ceremonies.

3. In surfing parlance: the sublime yet precarious space inside the barrel of a breaking wave.

Drawing inspiration from the unique aesthetics and function of each definitional context, Græn R∞m invites an intergenerational public to rest, learn, commune, take care, and prepare for, or seek respite from, the many performances of everyday life. To this end, Græn R∞m is anchored by reading areas furnished with thought-provoking, critical, and imaginative texts, games, visual art, and music—a mixture of found, curated, and original work by Solarpunk Surf Club. 

Græn R∞m features a library reserve curated around the eco-revolutionary practice of solarpunk, which itself draws from social ecology, art nouveau, agroecology, the arts and crafts movement, infoshops, proletkult, workers’ clubs, visionary fiction, afrofuturism, palliative design, DIY, jugaad, and the philosophical-literary utopian tradition. Members of the public are invited to contribute their ideas, time, and creativity to Græn R∞m; through interaction with the texts and environment, as well as by adding titles to the collection throughout the project’s duration. 

Original works by Solarpunk Surf Club in Græn R∞m include: 

Solarpunk Futures: an artist’s game for collaborative utopian visioning, working in (and against) the conventions of tabletop role-playing whereby players use backcasting and modified consensus to collectively ‘remember’ the stories of how their ancestors built a social ecological utopia.

Solarpunk Tarot Deck: a set of cards for connecting the history and practice of cartomancy to liberatory divination utilizing relief and computer-augmented printmaking techniques.

Space Vanity: a hybrid digital-sculptural work consisting of a reclaimed three-paneled vanity in which the central mirror has been replaced with a digital display. This display contains a real-time spectral graph of an attached camera’s output; the viewer’s image is rendered as a rainbow-like pattern illustrating the colors contained therein. The resulting graphic mimics the spectrograms used to determine the elemental contents of distant stars, thereby subverting the vanity’s intended function—that of judging one’s appearance against externally-imposed, superficial signifiers of beauty and worth—and realigning it towards a sense of the self that speaks to humanity’s stellar origins and the interconnectedness of the individual to others and to the rest of nature.