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submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

Okay, to be more serious, my main vibe from looking at solarpunk art is that the artists aren't involved in production, especially industrial production. Ultimately, I wonder how production is handled in a solarpunk society. There's essentially two ends of a spectrum: industrial production and artisan production.

Industrial production means factories, and I struggle to find any meaningful difference between a solarpunk factory vs a futuristic factory vs a cyberpunk factory. All futuristic factories converge to a design of being:

  1. Autonomous
  2. In near/complete darkness
  3. Filled with inert gas

And since a society is ultimately organized by how production is handled, then there's really not a whole lot of difference between a solarpunk society and a more generic futuristic society. Less chrome and more trees I guess? From a purely aesthetic perspective, you turn a futuristic factory into a solarpunk factory by photoshopping a bunch of trees right next to the factory and replacing a field of invasive grass with a field of native wildflowers. But the actual interior of the factory would be identical, and a faithful depiction of the interior of a solarpunk factory would be identical to a faithful depiction of the interior of a futuristic factory.

Artisan production is the other end, and that's where the fashy vibes come from, especially when artisan production is artistically extolled by artists living in a settler-colonial society where the ideal form of living is larping as a yeoman homesteading pioneer living on stolen Indigenous land. Even "communal living" doesn't cut it because artisan production can't keep up with industrial production, meaning the outputs of artisan production often goes to the immediate community and the immediate community only. And if you live within a community that lacks the means or ability to produce that particular commodity because your skin color is different or you live in an arid desert? Well, tough shit.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I gotta agree on the artisan production as idealized by people inside settler society often having fashy vibes, especially when people start talking about setting up a commune in the woods for their friends.

Just from image searching a lot of the art does seem to just be futuristic building+trees, but where are the animals? gimme a big field of bison just living their lives next to a towering hive-city without sprawling suburbs and some trees please!

this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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