Monday 27 October 2014

God in the Steam


This week has been quite special (and busy), with the arrival of the 2014 Gothic Festival to Mancunian shores. The Steampunk art exhibition I was part of - Aerial Burglars of Cottonopolis, by the Corpse Collective - was very well received and seen by around 150 people during it's 3 day pop-up. The photo at the bottom of this post shows a lovely nod in our direction by the Manchester Evening News :)

For SUB, the main event was Friday afternoon's Steampunk tour of the Power Hall, afternoon tea and panel discussions. There were some very interesting discussions and demonstrations on fabricating Steampunk artefacts, the Victorian martial art of Bartitsu (used by Sherlock Holmes & the Suffragettes! and no, that's not the name of a rock band... yet) and Steampunk in graphic novels and films.

Claire and I were privileged to be able to present the idea of finding God in Steampunk, which was well received. There were also some excellent questions at the end, in which we were able to confirm that this is not a suggestion to return to Victorian theological thinking and values. Rather, a way of taking inspiration from those times and using that period and this gothic culture to enhance contemporary theological thinking and experience. Particularly to encourage thinking around possible better future worlds, using Steampunk creativity as good stewards of this earth (recycling, up cycling and so on) & to imagine the Steampunk tendency to fix the broken and invent the new being used in the realm of social justice.

I've added this to the Past Events page, where you can find a link to the presentation we used. There were some wonderful people at the event and contact details have been exchanged, so I look forward to seeing where this road takes us in the future. There is so much more to explore in the realm of Steampunk Spirituality and looking through a similar lens more widely at the Gothic - looking through a theological lens darkly!


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