Hi @sasha - this is amazing! Incredibly interesting thematization and selection of people. I wish they could all be invited.
Your post made me think a lot, mostly around the quest but also about choice; how difficult it is to choose between all the many theories, interests and experiments surrounding Aerocene. It’s specific - we are all envisioning a new era free from fossil fuels - but also very broad. Many different voices from such a broad range of disciplines are coming together, all having this shared experience in common without necessarily agreeing on what it is. Still they are willing, even wanting, to share thoughts from it with each other coming together in Aerocene. More often than not, it’s the emissions free traveling with lighter-than-air sculptures that is the one thing breaching out and connecting everything… So, I was thinking, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could make a flight happen during the Symposium?
Anyway, I wrote a short list of who could be interesting to invite to the symposium you are describing but maybe they are more suitable for future talks and summits… It’s getting close to the date, so these people are probably more of a “Wishlist”. Still I wanted to write them down to see what you and others might think.
To address some environmental and ecological problems of this era, I think it would be interesting to invite a couple of environmental activists/spokespeople. A very central component of sustainability politics is Environmental Justice, and to include it both as a field of research and as a movement could spark some interesting conversations. I was thinking of Jennifer Morgan of Greenpeace and Bill McKibben from 350.org, for example…
I would also look into two really fantastic culture scholars Clare Colebrook and Eva Horn. Both are doing some really interesting work using Anthropocenic themes, and experiments with different pedagogies and curriculum building. Also great and very engaging speakers…
Oh and maybe Johan Rockström as well.