UPDATE (19/02): WE HAVE REACHED OUR TARGET, THANKS TO THE PRE-SALE OF ALMOST 100 JOURNALS AND TWO GENEROUS PRIVATE DONATIONS TOTALLING £3000. THANK YOU ALL!
Although we have now covered our printing costs, you can still pre-order copies here.
In July 2009, we published Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto – funded by an online campaign which raised $1800 in three weeks.
Now we’re seeking $7000 to cover the costs of the first Dark Mountain journal, featuring essays from Ran Prieur, JM Greer, Jay Griffiths and Alastair McIntosh, poetry from Melanie Challenger and Mario Petrucci, and an interview with Derrick Jensen. In return, we’re offering a range of rewards and recognition.
The manifesto argued that “sustainability” had become a delusional attempt to preserve a collapsing way of living, that “the end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop”, and that writers, artists and all whose work is rooted in the imagination have a particular role to play as we navigate the transition to the unknown world ahead.
It was read around the world, reviewed in publications from The Independent to the Australian Financial Review. We were called “crazy collapsitarians” and “dangerous romantics”, but we also got thousands of emails from people for whom its message resonated deeply: activists tired of pretending that one more push would do it, writers sick of a literary culture of clever cynicism, people looking for the hope beyond hope.
Now we’ve gathered a collection of stories, essays and poems exploring the territory beyond the edge of what we have called civilisation. We plan to publish this in May 2010 in the form of a handmade, hardback book, in a limited edition of 1000 copies.
To do this, we need your help. The Dark Mountain Project has no external funding. The printing costs come to around £4500 and our bank account currently has about £600 in it. So we’re asking you to contribute to a fundraising campaign which aims to raise $7000 by 14 February, 2010.
The journal will sell for £12/$20 a copy and all profits will go into funding the publication of future issues and running DM events. It will be launched at UNCIVILISATION: The Dark Mountain Festival, in Llangollen, Wales (28-30th May).
We want to open a conversation about the world we’re heading into and the stories we need to make sense of it. Please join us in making that conversation possible!
