solar futures

What could a future look like in which technology, ecology and community sustain one another? Solar Futures starts from this question. Between 2026 and 2027, three artists each develop a new work – a physical installation, a screen-based experience and a live performance – through a shared path of research, development, production and circulation across Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Spain.

The programme is rooted in solarpunk, a movement born in literature and design that Ben Valentine describes as “a statement of intent about the future we hope to create”. Drawing on renewable energies, prefigurative politics and do-it-yourself ethics, solarpunk reclaims technology as a tool for empowerment, commoning and decentralised living. It favours open-source tools and shared knowledge, technologies that put human and ecological wellbeing first, design that fosters conviviality, and futures built on justice and inclusion. It refuses techno-pessimism and climate doomerism alike, and with them the idea that no alternative can be imagined.

Each work follows one thematic pathway.

Renewable energy and circular resources 
The installation explores energy autonomy and decentralised infrastructures, recycled and bio-based materials, and the principles of the circular economy.

Permacomputing and digital sobriety
Permacomputing applies the principles of permaculture to digital creation: frugality, adaptability, longevity and long-term thinking. It calls for a conscious, low-impact use of technology, from energy-efficient code and local, decentralised servers to open-source platforms, low-tech solutions and data sobriety. The screen-based work asks how creative practice can resist planned obsolescence, data extraction and the environmental costs of digital culture.

New imaginaries for political and societal organisation
The performance turns to the ways we organise ourselves: alternative models of governance and democratic experimentation, cooperation and the commons, care economies and feminist economics, mutual aid, decolonial and indigenous perspectives on living systems. It questions existing power structures, centres marginalised voices and proposes other ways of being together.

The residency unfolds in four phases: research and contextualisation at Ohme in Brussels, with ULB and VUB; development at Electroni[k] in Rennes; production at iii in The Hague; and distribution mentoring led by LEV. Each work premieres with one of the partners before the three are presented together at LEV Festival in 2027.

Alongside the works, Solar Futures includes public workshops sharing artistic and technological processes with local communities and professionals, a solar-powered, low-tech website, and a case study shared with the cultural and creative sectors. Green practices, ethics and inclusion guide every stage of the programme.

Selected artists

Three artists were selected through an open call. Their projects approach ecological transition, digital infrastructures and collective organisation from complementary angles.

David Lazar, interference_commons
Screen-based experience. Premiere at Maintenant Festival, Rennes, October 2026.

Carolin Schnurrer, Orbiting Other Rhythms
Live performance. Premiere at IN THE (K)NOW, LaVallée, Brussels, 10-13 December 2026.

Jin Lee, Syn-thesis: Autonomy Flag
Physical installation. Premiere at iii, The Hague, spring 2027.