The Dark Mountain Project is a network of writers, artists and thinkers who have stopped believing the stories our civilisation tells itself. We see that the world is entering an age of ecological collapse, material contraction and social and political unravelling, and we want our cultural responses to reflect this reality rather than denying it.
The Project grew out of a feeling that contemporary art and literature were failing to respond honestly or adequately to the scale of our entwined ecological, economic and social crises. We believe that writing and art have a crucial role to play in coming to terms with this reality, and in questioning its foundations.
We came to this issue of Dark Mountain with a question, how do we begin to find our way home? When our stories have failed us and our maps have led us astray, how do we get our bearings? And what remnants might we find of the meaning and security for which a human home, if we are lucky, might stand?
We live in a time of loss. Think of the species which have passed out of being since you were born, the languages, the multitudes of ways of being and knowing. It is a time of lost certainties and lost people, falling through the patterns of pain, denial, anger, bargaining and despair that mark the experience of loss.
Directly or indirectly, often serendipitously, the writing and art collected here offers a space within which to begin facing our situation and finding what paths remain open to us.
Book 3 is a 296-page hardback with a specially-commissioned cover and endpapers by Mattias Jones. It features 58 essays, poems and stories, and 40 colour plates. Publication date: summer 2012. Highlights include:
Essays and conversations: Akshay Ahuja talks to Dmitri Orlov; Paul Kingsnorth talks to conservationists Doug and Kris Tompkins; John Rember explores the end of the world via ski-ing and academia; Matt Szabo bends like a peasant; Dougald Hine talks to Sajay Samuel about Ivan Illich; Charlotte Du Cann explores flowers in America; Paul Kingsnorth joins up scything, the Unabomber and the end of environmentalism; Ian Hill finds carbon in Borrowdale; James Hester explains the three lessons of history; Caspar Henderson explores the time before history.
Fiction: Short stories from Margaret Irish, Nick Hunt, Tom Hirons, Gregory Norminton and Chris T-T.
Poetry: from Neil Curry, Eleanor Rees, Adrienne Odasso, Em Strang, Benjamin Morris, Roselle Angwin, George Roberts and Margot Boyer.
Art: illustrated poetry from Mat Osmond, Kim Major-George and Steve Thorp; photography from Cat Lupton, Andy Broomfield, Tony Hall, Bridget McKenzie; art by Rima Staines, Darren Allen, Jake Weigel and Jackie Taylor.
Three tasters from book three: