Utopian Studies Society Europe

Author: utopian-studies-europe

  • Up the Anider without a Paddle: Trying to Make Art in Utopia — Sam Bunn — 10 Dec 2026

    Up the Anider without a Paddle: Trying to Make Art in Utopia — Sam Bunn — 10 Dec 2026

    The Utopian Studies Society Europe welcomes you to its new series of online talks featuring speakers from utopian studies and practice. Each event is limited to one hour and combines a twenty-minute presentation with ample time for discussion. Subscribe to the USSE mailing list to receive online talk announcements and participation links.

    Join us for the inaugural USSE Online Talk on
    Thursday, 10 December 2026, 18:00–19:00 CET.

    Our first speaker will take us on his artistic exploration of utopia, which began in 2014. Sam Bunn is a multimedia artist living in Linz, Austria. He completed his MA at the Kunstuniversität Linz (2018) and published a paper, “Delineating the Missing Film Genre: Eutopia”, in the Open Library of Humanities Journal (2019).

    This is what the artist would like you to know about his talk:

    I’m a multimedia, process driven artist. I like prototypes, variations on a theme and humour.
    I’ve been exploring utopia through art for around a dozen years now, all the while living as a cultural migrant in Linz, Austria.

    It started by accident against the backdrop of Brexit, driven by a yin-yang mix of anger, despair, hope, love and science fiction.

    I had my artistic strategy – to explore Utopia as Method>>>Ruth Levitas filtered through an art-brain:
    Make it site specific, do some research, explore my feelings and those of my collaborators re:[Topic].
    Put them into the work, find the punchlines. Spin variations on a theme in order to test a medium. Work the process. Iterate. Leave traces, move on.
    In so doing, create a rich tapestry of ideas, mediums and tactics for use as an older artist with less energy and ideas but more maturity(sic).

    The body of work developed through my master studies and the subsequent encouragement of the USSE to develop my ideas into a research paper.
    The engine was always a feeling of lack, ‘Suvin’s Hollow’: Where in popular culture are the positive futures I want to live in? What might they be like? How to create drama in paradise?

    The crescendo of this cycle was just enough funding to create a prototype for a science fiction utopian sitcom, which took years and was a fruitful flop.
    As with all of the collaborative projects, there were many wonderful experiences and togethernesses, alongside occasional, more painful exchanges.
    And often the feeling: it’s hard for actors to ‘do utopia’ without ‘playing the child’.

    As I licked my wounds and paid back debts, I returned to my oldest love, point and click comedy adventure games, to keep the art candle burning alone.
    To my surprise, what emerged was a Tom Moylan style critical dystopia.

    For this online talk, I’ll present parts of my projects and attempt to highlight some of the more interesting findings.

    Learn more about Sam’s work at sambunn.net. The image above shows a still from his video essay utopia with an E.

    This event will be moderated by Philipp P. Thapa. Organisers: Emrah Atasoy and P. P. Thapa.

    The USSE Online Talks will continue in the spring of 2027 with philosopher Julia Urabayen on feminist utopias. Subscribe to the USSE mailing list to receive the full announcement and participation link.

  • Testament to Artur Blaim and Lifetime Achievement Award

    Testament to Artur Blaim and Lifetime Achievement Award

    Address by Gregory Claeys — USSE Conference, Valencia, July 2025

    It is indeed a great pleasure, but one interwoven with deep sadness, to present the Utopian Studies Lifetime Achievement Award for 2025 to the late Professor Dr Artur Blaim, who died on April 20 this year. Artur was a longstanding member of the Society and was well known, indeed a close personal friend, to many of us.

    Born in 1950, Artur received his PhD in 1979 and was active in our field for more than forty years. A Fellow of the Academy of Europe, and the author of some ten monographs in utopian studies and of countless articles, he became an outstanding figure in the field. He was also extremely active in promoting and editing the work of others, and bringing many new authors into the fold. He accordingly guided and inspired a generation of utopian scholarship in Poland. Artur’s long-time specialty was Robinson Crusoe – I have often wondered if he kept a goat-skin umbrella secreted for special occasions. But he also wrote at length on the wider eighteenth century, on Robinsonades, on Thomas More, and on utopian and dystopian theory.

    Most recently he took up the leadership of the Centre for Utopian Studies at the University of Gdansk, a city which then awarded him an esteemed civic commendation. He was also honoured in 2021 with a festschrift entitled Opalescent Worlds.

    We remember him as a stalwart friend of the Society, who hosted our meetings on several occasions and who always brought his erudition and enthusiasm to our gatherings over many years. We will greatly miss his irrepressible warmth and companionship, his ready wit and penetrating intelligence, his enduring tact and diplomacy, and his critical love of our common subject. “When I think of him, I smile”, wrote one colleague. We have lost a master in our field. Thank you, dear Artur, belatedly, for all your efforts on behalf of the Society, and for being such a fine human being!

    There will be an Artur Blaim memorial lecture at our next meeting in Bucharest in July 2026, to be delivered by Justyna Galant.

    This award is being accepted by Artur’s wife, Prof. Ludmilla Gruszewska-Blaim, for whose presence here I am also very grateful.