From Kollapscamp, with love
Screenshot Instagram Story, original Source: https://www.instagram.com/stories/pfoetchen.music/3711964716982871302?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igsh=MThhMjZ1dmw0ZjRiMw== (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)
04/09/2025
From the Kollapscamp organising team:
The first Kollapscamp is over, and we are still completely overwhelmed by all of you, by the intensity and resonance, by the many potentials and relationships that we created here. We are proud and happy, but also exhausted, and therefore not yet at a point where we can write a more detailed text that analyses what happened here in-depth and critically, and perhaps even considers next moves and strategies. Nevertheless, we want to get in touch with you directly after the camp, while all the impressions are still fresh, to thank you (the host collective and the great action kitchen Food for Action, the medics and the crêpe and waffle stands, the shuttle buses and the Interventionist Left, the people who organised the Info Point, the Kids Space and those who ran the bar – and many, many more), and share our reflections, self-criticism, but also our pride and joy: about what happened here, what we all achieved together here.
Multi-generational camp
From the outset of the organising process, one thing was clear: it wasn't just the relatively young climate movement that was represented here – although it was present and very visible, with people from Ende Gelände, Extinction Rebellion, and the Last Generation. Beyond that, however, many left-wing and ecological movement types also came together, older, more experienced activists that had not been involved in demonstrations, let alone activist camps, for years or, in some cases, decades. From a Green Hamburg city councillor to (self-described) ‘queer young crusties’, from bourgeois leftists to organised Christians. There were people there who had never before engaged with such lefty topics and forms of organisation. It was also a queer camp, and according to well-informed sources, the promised all-gender cruising spaces actually happened during the closing party on Saturday in the twisting catacombs of the host collective. At the camp, the oldest participant was 85, the youngest ones were kids. There were global justice activists, Grannies against the Fasc, anti-nuclear and youth environmental activists, people from the hacker and renewable energy scenes, and even the community-supported agriculture movement, which we had criminally neglected in the programme, was there and began to network with the emerging collapse movement.
Self-organisation camp
Which brings us to the next point: self-organisation. This has been really, really great here, which impressed us on the one hand because so many people here had never been to an activist camp before, and on the other hand because we, as the organising crew, many of us without much experience in organising such large events, were incredibly grateful for it, as things kept slipping through the cracks, there were considerable friction and gaps in the process, such that even important kept dropping off our radar screens. In all these cases, it was you lot, all of you who took care of the problems and – one of our favourite examples – set up a wonderful self-organised kids' space. In fact, more people spontaneously and enthusiastically took on ‘reproductive labour shifts’ than we had ever experienced before.
Emotional labour Camp
We are also very pleased that our programme not only included top-standard international courses in the field of ‘practical disaster preparedness’ such as the one offered by Cadus (Climate Emergency Responder) or the two-day simulation game ‘Organising in Crisis’, Gatan's Förbands/Pär Plüschke's spectacularly popular format ‘Stop the Bleed’, but also completely new modules such as ‘How to Defend a Pride March’ or a workshop that shows in a very practical way how people can communicate with each other in times of power, internet and all kinds of failures. A significant part of the programme, about a third, was in fact devoted to what we sometimes call “internal work” or, more prosaically, emotional labour. From the outset, it was clear in the organisational process that we as a camp could only contribute to the emergence of a just collapse movement if we managed to establish stable links between those who want to get their hands dirty with practical work and disaster preparedness (whether in queer self-defence or building pirate radio stations) and those whose work is more internal: those who deal with trauma and create safe spaces, those who struggle to understand what solidarity can mean in collapse, those who continue the inspiring practice of the Klimakollapscafé. We consider this connection between internal and external work on an equal footing to be one of the central political axes and innovations of the just collapse movement.
Kinda-sorta-Kollapscamp
However, this focus on emotional and practical work rather than traditional conference and discussion formats also led to a decision that we now consider a mistake: we wrongly assumed that what we like to call ‘collapse acceptance’ – actually a mixture of acceptance of physical and social collapse realities, and a slight annoyance with all the discussions about whether collapse is and will certainly be the case – was as pronounced among most people at the camp as it was among us. This led us to organise too few events, with the exception of the lecture ‘Systems in Collapse’, at which these questions (‘the collapse question’) could have been discussed controversially but respectfully. And when ‘collapse’ was discussed, it was more in conversations on the fringes of workshops, conversations in which collapse was discussed more as discourse/narrative/strategy than as a real physical and social process. In terms of a potentially emerging collapse movement, we did not really fulfil our responsibility to develop a ‘pedagogy of collapse' here.
Fehlerkultur-Camp
Speaking of mistakes: we have made quite a few, and we want to disclose them here. Not in the sense of a confessional-like wailing and ashes-on-our-heads, but in the sense of a reasonable, supportive and productive “Fehlerkultur” (literally: the ways in which mistakes are dealt with) in which we understand that those who have the courage to move forward, who take risks, who sometimes act before it is 100% clear whether the outcome will be completely error-free, will inevitably make mistakes. This is especially true when it comes to an organisational team that was thrown together rather randomly (and was basically too small and, in some places, honestly overwhelmed), which could only work together online from the beginning and still managed to organise something pretty awesome here. But now, on to (some of) our mistakes, and the following list is certainly not complete.
We would have liked to hear more international and especially BiPoc perspectives at the camp, both in workshops and among participants. We managed to bring people from the Anglo-world here, but not the extremely inspiring Soulèvements de la Terre from France; our attempt to bring people who organised and helped during the floods in Valencia was also unsuccessful, which was only partly due to insufficient financial resources. There was an improvised ‘Internationals’ meeting attended by about 50 people (e.g. from Finland and Turkey, the USA and Switzerland, the Netherlands and Austria), but more space for strategy discussion and international networking would have been good for the camp.
Another mistake, and one that was very painful for us, was the way in which the very active discussions we have in our organisation about the role of ‘leadership’ came across at the opening event. Our idea was to deliberately address Tadzio's very central role, at least in terms of public visibility, and to symbolically represent the handover of the reins to the movement collective – a handover that has already largely taken place in our actual,day-to-day work. This obviously didn't come across at all to many people, hardly anyone noticed the subtle irony, and in the end even we found that it was quite cringe-worthy at some points.
However, even though our attempt to address leadership in our movements – what is the function of leadership, when is it needed, how is it controlled and held accountable, how is it exchanged, etc. — has obviously failed (Fehlerkultur: mistakes will be made), we are proud of our attempt to find words for a topic that is too often avoided in left-wing movements, and when it is discussed, this usually happens with one goal in mind only: to delegitimise and shame productive forms of political leadership. We – and this is emphasised above all by those people in the organisational process who are not yet accustomed to the brutal joy with which we on the radical left like to tear each other apart – wish for the future not only a more open Fehlerkultur, but also a culture of dialogue in which criticism can be articulated and received productively.
Kollapscamp
And yet, despite the exhaustion, despite all the criticism from outside and inside, our basic feeling is one that comes pretty damn close to euphoria. Kollapscamp was the first political space, at least in the German-speaking world, but we believe also in the European context, where almost 1,000 people came together and where ‘collapse acceptance’ was the dominant political position, where we did not have to waste our time primarily on debates with people whose political analyses consist mainly of looking for ways to ignore reality (for example, we were finally not accused of ‘alarmism’, not once!). Anyone who is aware of collapse themselves, and of course anyone who was at the camp, will know how powerful the experience is of no longer feeling alone with the knowledge of reality. Some of us compare it to coming out experiences. In this space of collapse acceptance, a large number of people came together who not only sit in workshops and discuss, but who increasingly want to invest their energy in building safety and solidarity structures for the future. This first Kollapscamp brought together a large number of people for whom the idea of working together on a solidarity-based collapse movement creates a path to the future that doesn't just look dark and scary.
What happens next? We of course already have ideas and visions, but please forgive us if we don't share them here just yet: the very last tents are currently being taken down, and we are completely exhausted. Once again, thank you to everyone who was here, everyone who helped, everyone who supported us, from near and far. To all of you, we extend the gratitude that one participant shared with us at the very end of the camp: He said (paraphrased) that he had been depressed and frustrated with the world for 40 years and then suddenly we came along and created a place where people want to honestly deal with collapse and tackle it, what a zest for life that gives him and that he definitely wants to continue being part of it. And he didn't just mean the organising team: he meant all of us who were at the camp and made it possible.
That's all for now. You'll be hearing from us. Now we're going to chill out for a bit.
The Kollapscamp organising crew
P.S.: And finally, a big thank you to everyone who helped us plug the financial gap that arose shortly before the camp. We are now in the black financially and will soon be announcing which projects the remaining money will go towards. However, anyone who would like to continue donating to the Collapse Camp and the follow-up projects that are sure to come can do so here: https://www.betterplace.org/de/projects/156994-solidaritaet-i-d-katastrophe-deine-spende-fuers-kollapscamp (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)
