SOLARLAB // MANIFEST

The voice-over is in Portuguese and fits into a few sentences. Darkness in it is not a verdict but a chance to evolve. People live in realities that others have defined for them, and have forgotten to create their own. The proposal is to create it together, remembering that everyone is connected. Hence the name they give themselves — “solar”.

Solarpunk grew as an answer to cyberpunk. Instead of a future of megacorporations and neon — a future that is regenerative, decentralized and connected to nature. At its core are collectivity, climate justice and an organic aesthetic, with roots in Afrofuturism and Amazofuturism. For Solarlab it is not a genre but a working method: technology is there so that people, nature and the city can live together, not so that one replaces another.

Solarlab is the first node of W3ST, a solarpunk metanation. W3ST is set up as an impact DAO: a community from different countries builds a shared narrative, turns it into action plans and launches regenerative nodes, while resources and rewards are distributed for cooperation. Solarlab already has a physical place in Brazil. That is why the manifesto speaks not of a state but of a homeland by conviction — and that is how the film's closing line reads too.

Solarlab was founded by creative director and cybernetic artist Erotides Nai (ERO) from Pernambuco, together with the ORBIS core. It is a multidisciplinary lab run by a young team: audiovisual art, technology, ecology and art. The collective makes interactive and immersive sensory installations, digital fashion and films in which people, nature and technology work as one system. In December 2022 ERO was among the five artists of the Ray-Ban Ocupa festival at Teatro Oficina. The collective's portfolio includes Brazil Immersive Fashion Week and São Paulo Fashion Week.

The film opens with a daytime drone flight over the concrete high-rises of São Paulo, then moves into the night: dark interiors, a burning field, light in the palms of the hands. The finale is a laser projection over the city. The credits list 44 people: ground and aerial camera operators, a light drone pilot, a fire effects artist and a firefighter on set, three laser projection artists, production designers, costume and make-up.

The film's 3D and visual effects are our work. We extended the live night footage with fire, drones and lasers using CG elements and compositing: the city, the flames and the light come together into a single visual language, and the manifesto looks like a frame from the future it talks about. We worked with Solarlab / ORBIS in São Paulo from November 2022 to June 2023. Besides the manifesto — Mundo Sneakers (the lab film opened the showcase of rare pairs at Digital Fashion Week São Paulo 2023), Ray-Ban, Ingresse and BRIFW.