Hope Through the Ruins
#3: There Are Only Alternatives: Utopias in the Ruins
Session organized by Laura Horn and David Pinder
Syndicate of Creatures / Michelle Appelros and Signe Vad presentation session, GRASP festival 2025
Withe a panel of: Benjamin Richards, Fernando Racimo, Macon Holt, Laima Nomeikaite and Kirstine Reffstrup
#3 Session by Laura Horn and David Pinder: There Are Only Alternatives: Utopias in the Ruins
What happens when we stop trying to fix a broken system and start learning from its ruins?
In this panel, we explore how alternatives emerge not from grand plans, but from the messy
work of letting go, failing forward, and building in pluriverse spaces. The speakers examine
different sites of productive breakdown: dismantling fossil fuel infrastructure through
exnovation, finding hope through personal and collective recovery, discovering utopian
possibilities in criminalisedcultural spaces, and breaking up with capitalism'sfalse promises
of sustainability. Rather than offering blueprints, we ask: Why do we cling to systems that
are killing us?Whatcan addiction recovery teach us about social transformation? How do
marginalized communities already practice the alternatives we seek?
Join us for discussing the courage required to embrace uncertainty, the determination found
in ruins, and the radical hope that emerges when we finally let go of what never served us.
Text response that we presented together with a video artwork.
Hope Through the Ruins
Syndicate of Creatures – Michelle Appelros and Signe Vad
We wish to present the foundation of our work in KRÆ Syndikatet, as we are rooted in radical hope in a post-apocalyptic world.
This presentation draws on personal experience, telling the story of addiction—and the deep and seemingly impossible decision to get clean. In order forthis to succeed, one must be ready to sacrifice everything and change everything. It means unlearning, relearning, and embracing the unfamiliar. A profound acceptance of one’s own failures and harmful behavior is necessary to find new solutions and begin a different life.
We are all living in a time of history where the world is hard to grasp, as it contains overwhelming hardships and impending catastrophes all around—so much so that many people can’t bear to face it in its entirety, let alone reflect on how it connects to their own lives and daily actions. But deep down, most probably know that major changes are urgently needed.
What sets us apart, is that we have already been through one kind of transformation once before. We had to make an irreversible choice—to change every single aspect of our lives in order tosurvive. We had to look honestly and clearly at everything, in order tomake the right decisions and not fall back into addiction and the prison of self-deception.
We had to consciously and repeatedly choose life—and to actively and repeatedly reject death. We had to learn how to live again, in a completely new way. We had to take responsibility for everything we did and rebuild our lives from scratch. That’s why we know change is possible. We know in our own bodies that hope is the only way forward. And we know that hope does not come from within—it emerges through action. We also know that hope must be created together with others.
From this core of determination, we draw the strength that drives us forward.
Through our lived experience we know what marginalization can feel like. That’s why we ally with all others in the ‘othering’. That’s why we can't stop seeing the global environmental injusticesand why we are ecofeminists and degrowthers. That’s why we call ourselves KRÆ. That’s why we believe something else is possible. That’s why we believe in the pluriverse. That’s why we believe in other forms of languages—and in the transformative power of art.
We have created a Sensory Resistance Movement as a response to Cartesian dualism.
How could we simply stand by while death—disguised as fossil capital—exploits and destroys through overt and systemic violence, while slow violencesilently chokes non-human species, communities and ecosystems in the planetary death spiral of elite-driven collapse?
At KRÆ Syndikatet, we work for other solutions—the ones we don’t yet know. The ones we can only create as we move forward together, without knowing exactly where we are going or how we will get there. We know that the answer and the utopia lie in surrendering to the uncertain, the unknown, and the radically different. We are heading somewhere new—we invent it along the way, together. Thatis howwelive radicalhope
#3: Der findes kun alternativer: utopier i ruinerne
Håb gennem ruinerne!
KRÆ Syndikatet– Michelle Appelros og Signe Vad
Vi er interesseret i at præsentere grundlaget bag vores arbejde i KRÆ syndikatet, med radikalt håb i en post-apokalyptisk verden.
Denne præsentation tager udgangspunkt i personlige erfaringer, som bliver beretningen om at være narkoman og så tage en dyb og umulig beslutning om at ville blive clean. I den proces og for at det skal lykkes, må man være parat til at ofre alt og ændre alt. Det betyder at alt skal aflæres, om-læres og det fremmede nye omfavnes. En dyb accept af personligt fiaskoog dårlig adfærd er nødvendig for at kunne finde nye løsninger og et andet liv.
Vi står i en tid med så meget dårligdom og katastrofe forude at de fleste ikke orker at tage helheden ind, end mindre trække paralleller til sin hverdag og daglige gang. Hvor måske inderst inde, de fleste godt kan se at store forandringer er påkrævet?!
Vi har derimod prøvet dette en gang før. Vi har måtte træffe et uafvendeligt valg,at være parate til at ændre hver eneste millimeter og celle i vores liv for at overleve. Vi har måtte se klart og ærligt på alt, for at kunne træffe de rigtige beslutninger for ikke at komme direkte tilbage til misbruget og selvbedragets fængsel.
Vi har måtte aktivt konsekvent vælge livet til, og aktivt konsekvent vælge døden fra. Vi har måtte lære at leve forfra igen, på en ny måde. Vi måtte tage ansvar for alt hvad vi foretog os, og bygge alt op forfra. Derfor ved vi at forandring er mulig. Derfor ved vi på egen krop at håb er den eneste vej fremad. Derfor ved vi, at håb ikke kommer indefra, men er noget, der kommer ved at gøre. Derfor ved vi også, at vi er nødt til at gøre håb sammen. Fra denne kerne af beslutsomhed henter vi den kraft der driver os. Derfor ved vi også noget om marginalisering. Derfor allierer vi os med dem i udenforskabet, derfor er vi øko-feminister og Degrowthersog derfor kalder vi os for KRÆ. Derfor tror vi på at noget andet er muligt, derfor tror vi på at konceptet ‘pluriverse’, og derfor tror vi på andre sprog og den transformative kraft i kunsten. Vi har skabt den sensoriske modstandsbevægelse som svar på den kartesianske dualisme.
Hvordan kunne vi så bare se til når døden forklædt som fossil kapitalenudnytter og ødelægger med vold, og ‘slowviolence’ kvæler menneskesamfund og økosystemer langsomt men sikkert i eliternes planetære dødsspiral.
Vi i KRÆ syndikatet arbejder for de andre løsninger, dem vi ikke kender endnu, dem vi kun kan arbejde frem mens vi usikkert bevæger os fremad, uden at vide præcis hvor vi skal hen eller hvordan vi vil komme dertil. Vi ved at det er i overgivelsen til det uvisse, det ukendte og helt anderledes at løsningen og utopien ligger, vi skal et nyt sted hen, derfor må vi udvikle det mens vi træder de nye stier -sammen.