Acknowledgments

In May 2019, a group of international scholars, students, artists, activists, and practitioners met at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, Quebec, for “Solarity: After Oil School,” three days of intensive reflection and collaboration on the challenges and possibilities of a social transition to energy systems and communities organized around the energy of the sun. Workshops, presentations, and discussions were held on themes including feminist solarities, Indigenous solarities, community renewable energy, revolutionary solarities, Solarpunk, and speculative solarities. Participants were invited to contribute subsequent reflections on these and other themes. These contributions became this collectively authored text.

We met on the unceded traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabeg peoples, near the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation communities at Kahnawá:ke, Kanehsatà:ke, and Akwesasne. Kawenote Teiontiakon is a documented Kanien’kéha name for the Island of Montreal; the city is known as Tiohti:áke in Kanien’kéha and as Mooniyang in Anishinaabemowin. We are grateful to the long-standing custodians of the lands and waters on which we met, and we hope that they are honored by the work we have done.

We are also grateful to several people and organizations that supported this work, including the Petrocultures Research Group, the Grierson Research Group, Future Energy Systems at the University of Alberta, the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Initiative for Indigenous Futures at Concordia University, the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences at Rice University, Just Powers at the University of Alberta, and the University Research Chair in Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo. Special thanks to Lev Bratishenko, Fannie Gadouas, Kim Förster, Rafico Ruiz, Jordan Kinder, Mark Simpson, Imre Szeman, Sheena Wilson, and Leah Pennywark.