creative writing school
Module 6: Worlds Beyond
structure
Introduction
Theory
Inspirations
Creative exercise
Stay grounded & motivated
Share your text with us
Theory
Inspirations
Creative exercise
Stay grounded & motivated
Share your text with us
introduction
Welcome to the darker half of Worlds Beyond. If last time we wandered through dreams of elsewhere – utopias, imagined sanctuaries of desire – today we descend into their shattered reflections. Dystopia. Not only a genre or literary style, but a lens. A slow unraveling. An architecture of anxiety. We will not only read or write about dystopia – we will inhabit its logic, explore its structures, feel its weight. Because dystopia is not fiction. Not always. Sometimes it is reality dressed up as exaggeration. Or the present accelerated.
theory
Dystopia begins when thinking ends.
Or rather, when critical thought becomes dangerous. When the question “why?” is replaced with the command “comply.” Michel Foucault's ideas about surveillance and discipline in Discipline and Punish are essential here: dystopia does not require prisons – it requires internalized control. Panopticism. We become our own jailors.
Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, also warned us about the “banality of evil” – the terrifying possibility that dystopia can emerge not from sadistic villains but from ordinary people doing their jobs.
Dystopia is not a monster. It is a system.
Or rather, when critical thought becomes dangerous. When the question “why?” is replaced with the command “comply.” Michel Foucault's ideas about surveillance and discipline in Discipline and Punish are essential here: dystopia does not require prisons – it requires internalized control. Panopticism. We become our own jailors.
Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, also warned us about the “banality of evil” – the terrifying possibility that dystopia can emerge not from sadistic villains but from ordinary people doing their jobs.
Dystopia is not a monster. It is a system.
inspiration
Estonian artist Kris Lemsalu’s work is part fantasy, part grotesque, part ceremony. She stages a carnival of contradictions: the sacred and the disposable, the animal and the cosmetic, the mythical and the hypermodern. Her 2019 Venice Biennale pavilion with Kyp Malone—“Biker, Bride, Builder, Businesswoman and Baby”—is not a story, but a state of being. A world of neon-lit ruins, porcelain limbs, mutated goddesses.
Critic Maria Lind described Lemsalu’s work as “theatre without narrative,” where each object seems to “have been born in the aftermath of an invisible ritual.” There is no linear dystopia here—there is hybrid collapse. The biker is also the bride. The baby is also the businesswoman. Identity becomes absurd, modular, collapsing under late capitalism's demand to be everything, do everything, own everything, survive everything—while staying Instagrammable.
Her use of materials is key: ceramics, fur, cheap plastic, organic rot, foam, glitter. They don’t hide their mortality. They decay in front of you. Her installations are post-human altars. They show a future where myths don’t save us, but haunt us. Where the divine and the disposable are fused. Where beauty is unstable, eerie, tender, leaking.
Lemsalu doesn’t scream “dystopia.” She bathes in it. She lets it mutate her. As if the only way to face collapse is to make it sacred, absurd, excessive. Her work invites us to do the same: not to warn, but to transform.
Critic Maria Lind described Lemsalu’s work as “theatre without narrative,” where each object seems to “have been born in the aftermath of an invisible ritual.” There is no linear dystopia here—there is hybrid collapse. The biker is also the bride. The baby is also the businesswoman. Identity becomes absurd, modular, collapsing under late capitalism's demand to be everything, do everything, own everything, survive everything—while staying Instagrammable.
Her use of materials is key: ceramics, fur, cheap plastic, organic rot, foam, glitter. They don’t hide their mortality. They decay in front of you. Her installations are post-human altars. They show a future where myths don’t save us, but haunt us. Where the divine and the disposable are fused. Where beauty is unstable, eerie, tender, leaking.
Lemsalu doesn’t scream “dystopia.” She bathes in it. She lets it mutate her. As if the only way to face collapse is to make it sacred, absurd, excessive. Her work invites us to do the same: not to warn, but to transform.
creative exercise
"Theatre without narrative": when the scenery becomes the story
In Kris Lemsalu’s world, porcelain limbs rest on velvet altars. Animal hides drip with pearls. Tents collapse in ecstasy. A bathtub becomes an altar. A shamanic rave reverberates inside a dead seal’s open mouth. Materials aren’t passive—they ache, seduce, stink, sing. The stage is not waiting for actors; it is the actor.
This week’s prompt:
Write a short scene or poetic fragment set inside a theatre piece with no narrative and no characters. The setting is your protagonist. The materials are your verbs.
In Kris Lemsalu’s world, porcelain limbs rest on velvet altars. Animal hides drip with pearls. Tents collapse in ecstasy. A bathtub becomes an altar. A shamanic rave reverberates inside a dead seal’s open mouth. Materials aren’t passive—they ache, seduce, stink, sing. The stage is not waiting for actors; it is the actor.
This week’s prompt:
Write a short scene or poetic fragment set inside a theatre piece with no narrative and no characters. The setting is your protagonist. The materials are your verbs.
stay grounded and motivated!
"As an artist, I’m neither fascinated by dystopia, nor seduced by chaos. I don’t find beauty in collapse, nor thrill in disorder. I don’t romanticize the mess. I don’t collect ruins. I don’t decorate myself with despair. But I use it. Strategically. Dramaturgically. Politically.
Because the dark is necessary. Not to glorify it—but to give contour to the clear. Without tension, no release. Without collapse, no rising. Without distortion, no clarity. I bring anxiety to the stage not because I love to suffer, but because I believe in transformation. And for that, I need friction. Dystopia becomes a tool. Not a destination.
It’s a substance—rich, sticky, volatile—from which brightness can erupt. From which tenderness gains weight. Silence gains gravity. Peace gains power.
So I invite you to use dystopia as I do: not as a theme, not as a spectacle, but as a material. A thick, unstable, unpredictable clay. Write with it. Shape it. Let it stain your fingers. But don’t stay there.
Use it to carve out the moments of calm, softness, justice, sensuality. Make your beauty dense. Let your joy have shadows. Let your clarity burn.
Shine. Always louder. Always brighter."
—Anna Ádám
Founder of the School of Disobedience
Because the dark is necessary. Not to glorify it—but to give contour to the clear. Without tension, no release. Without collapse, no rising. Without distortion, no clarity. I bring anxiety to the stage not because I love to suffer, but because I believe in transformation. And for that, I need friction. Dystopia becomes a tool. Not a destination.
It’s a substance—rich, sticky, volatile—from which brightness can erupt. From which tenderness gains weight. Silence gains gravity. Peace gains power.
So I invite you to use dystopia as I do: not as a theme, not as a spectacle, but as a material. A thick, unstable, unpredictable clay. Write with it. Shape it. Let it stain your fingers. But don’t stay there.
Use it to carve out the moments of calm, softness, justice, sensuality. Make your beauty dense. Let your joy have shadows. Let your clarity burn.
Shine. Always louder. Always brighter."
—Anna Ádám
Founder of the School of Disobedience
Photo: Kris Lemsalu: Biker, Bride, Builder, Businesswoman and Baby / Installation photo by Keith Hunter, Tramway, 2019