Slow Listening: Sounds from the Planetary Compendium
Seeding Optionality, Session #2 / An xCO Pop-Up Series
An Expanding Civilizational Optionality (xCO) Convening
Most of what we hear about planetary risk comes as numbers, charts and headlines. We can take them in and still feel very little. The glaciers, the seas and the air we depend on mostly sit in the background of our lives, as if someone else were looking after them. This evening is a chance to bring them a little closer, by slowing down, lying down and listening together.
The sounds come from the Planetary Compendium, an archive of approaches to governing (with) the planet, which Dark Matter Labs developed with the Berggruen Institute last year, with sound design by Meera Shenoy and Nithin Shamsudhin. It gathers ten case studies -- some historical approaches and others pulling current trends into the future -- on the governance complex boundary-transcending phenomena with planetary implications: the atom, the glaciers of the Hindu Kush Himalaya, the North Sea, the Moon.
We’ll begin with a short introduction, then the lights go down. Afterwards there’s time to stay and talk.
Underneath the whole series sits an idea we call existential becoming: what shifts in someone when they stop treating the conditions of their own life as a background somebody else maintains. The glaciers, the sea and the air are not only around us. We are in relation with them, and with everyone else who depends on them.
Everyone is welcome, no previous knowledge or background needed
The evening
18:30: doors open, with tea and the printed Compendium to look through
19:00: we start on time, so please arrive before then
19:00–19:45: a short introduction followed by the listening experience
19:45–20:30: time to stay, talk and reflect
Bring: Something comfortable to lie down in like warm socks and a jumper. Mats are provided (and there are chairs if you’d rather sit).
About the Planetary Compendium
The Planetary Compendium: Case Studies on Planetary Governance (2025) is living archive of case studies mapping the shifting architectures, imaginaries, and experiments shaping how life on Earth may be organized, sustained, and represented. Co-developed by Dark Matter Labs with Berggruen Institute, who also funded the effort, with over 60 expert collaborators form across the planet.
Read and listen at governtheplanet.org. The work received an honorary mention in the Prix Ars Electronica 2026.
About Seeding Optionality
For a hundred days, from mid-September to mid-December, xCO is running a pop-up studio at our field office Medulla. Every couple of weeks someone from the team puts a live piece of work in the room — a position we are taking, a capability we know we are missing, a term we are not yet sure holds — and opens it up.
The series is an attempt to do our field-building in public, anchored in one city. We want to find out whether the language we use internally means anything outside it, to join the dots between strands of our work that currently sit apart, and to get to know the people in Berlin — living here or passing through — already working on the same questions. Most of what we bring will be unfinished. Objections and adjacent work are easier to find before a position hardens.
The hundred days follow the 10x100 cycle, a quarterly organising rhythm initiated by Politics for Tomorrow and Dark Matter Labs, which several of us in the space helped build. Public Vitality Camp marked the kick-off in September.
About xCO
Expanding Civilizational Optionality (xCO) is a strand of Dark Matter Labs' work. The range of futures still available to us is narrowing, and most institutions are built to defend what already exists rather than to keep options open. xCO works on widening that range, and on the capabilities, capital and institutions that keep more futures possible.
Three ideas sit underneath the work, and Berlin is one of the first places we are putting them out into the world:
Existential becoming — what shifts in someone when they stop treating the conditions of their own life as a background somebody else maintains.
Existential capital — capital that has noticed it both shapes the future and depends on it.
Existential entrepreneurship — building what needs to exist, rather than competing for markets that already do.
We are putting these out to see what resonates, with whom, and where that can start to build traction. There is a lot that needs to happen in the world, and we are looking for people to learn and build with.
About Medulla
Medulla is a physical space for turning shared urgency into collective resilience by building new collaborations and infrastructures of prosperity. It brings together organisations, practitioners, and communities working across different fields to respond to the technical, ecological, economic, and cultural crises shaping our shared future.
Dark Matter Labs moved into Medulla in May, alongside Politics for Tomorrow / nextlearning, One Resilient Earth, VVSSL and a handful of independent collaborators, all working on resilience.