Chapunk Hour

Sip a cup of tea and join us as we debut Chapunk, a movement that aims to vividly imagine and co-create decolonising futures. 

“Chapunk” is a term coined by Danbee “Tauntaun” Kim and Yen Ooi to express their desire to create and experience more stories that project Asian mentalities, languages, and cultures into the future. More broadly, they share the dream of fostering a vibrant community enthusiastically engaged with the politics of speculative storytelling, and ready to challenge the status quo by acknowledging how the stories we tell of our own futures – and the people and ideas we see thriving in the future – can powerfully impact our lives in the here and now. 

Date: Saturday 12 July

Time: 3pm to 4pm

Chapunk Aunties: Danbee "Tauntaun" Kim and Yen Ooi

Guest Moderator: Eric Huang

Tickets: Economic Solidarity sliding scale*

Chapunk aspires to be a literary, artistic, and social movement that envisions and works toward decolonising futures that elevate and centre the perspectives, languages, and lived experiences of cultures that originated the cultivation and rituals of tea. 

The “cha” part of “chapunk” refers to the original word for tea. The tea plant (Camellia sinensis) is an evergreen shrub native to East Asia, and numerous languages in this region use the word “cha” to mean tea, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese. The portmanteau with “punk” also acknowledges the rich heritage of punk literature and the genres of steampunk, cyberpunk, solar punk, and lunarpunk as key influences for the Chapunk movement.

Meet the Chapunk aunties!

Yen is a narrative designer, writer, and researcher whose works explore East and Southeast Asian culture, identity, and values. She's currently exploring zoefuturism - a futurism of life-becomings through connectedness, engagement, and relationality. Her projects are varied, but they aim to cultivate cultural engagement in our current technology-driven ways of living. Learn more at www.yenooi.com.

Associated with:

Fireshine Games, Welbeck (Hachette), Chapunk Podcast, London Science Fiction Research Community, Ab Terra (Brain Mill Press), London Video Games Orchestra

Selected Past Projects:

Rén: The Ancient Chinese Art of Finding Peace and Fulfilment, non-fiction book - Writer

Road to Guangdong, computer game - Narrative Designer and Writer

Sun: Queens of Earth, novel - Writer

A Suspicious Collection of Short Stories and Poetry, collection - Writer

Danbee “Tauntaun” Kim (they/them) is a Korean-American field neuroscientist, community organiser, and storyteller. They study the history of science, teach neuroanatomy, and develop cultural technologies that help us share knowledge, embrace change, and face the unknown. They are the guardian of two twin cats named Ramiro and Minima, and they aggressively befriend dogs, horses, goats, sheep, birds, pigs, and more, wherever they go. Dancing in any and all forms makes Tauntaun super happy. To learn more, please visit danbeekim.org.

Meet our Guest Moderator!

Eric Huang wanted to be a palaeontologist. Field work didn't live up to his Jurassic Park dreams, though, so he accepted a secretary job at Disney Publishing – kickstarting a publishing career spanning three continents! Today Eric is an author, podcaster, and a lecturer at City University of London’s Masters in Publishing programme.

* What is the Economic Solidarity sliding scale?

At Pulse & Pickle, we are trying out a sliding scale pricing system for some of our events, to acknowledge economic inequity and increase the inclusiveness of our events.

Pulse & Pickle is a non-profit Community Interest Company (CIC) that operates a radical cultural centre and community hub on the Walthamstow High Street. We rely on our community to pay fairly, or as much as they can afford, to help us cover our running costs as well as provide affordable and accessible food and cultural experiences.

We also understand that people have different financial experiences and access to resources. We hope to make our events truly accessible to a diverse number of people no matter their financial status.

Chapunk Hour price information:

• "At Cost" = £5

• Subsidised = £3

• Solidarity = £10

The "At Cost" price covers the cost of delivering this event, with no mark-up included. In order to help us maintain a free-choice sliding scale ticket price system, we encourage those who can to pay the "Solidarity" price. 100% of ticket proceeds help us fulfil our affordable and accessible ethos.

These prices are simply here for your information -- when you register, you will have the option to freely choose how much you pay for a ticket. This includes paying less or nothing at all for those who can’t afford our subsidised prices.

A useful tool for thinking about where you might fall on the solidarity sliding scale is the Green Bottle: