*Project Launch for AGAINST CATASTROPHE**: UKRAINE DISPATCH* Hi everyone, Hope you all had a pleasant summer break. We are happy to launch the website for our multimodal research project, ‘Against Catastrophe’ <https://againstcatastrophe.net/>, with the *Ukraine Dispatch*. Our project challenges the normalization of catastrophic thinking and necropolitical designs in the contemporary world. It does so through the histories of science and technology, infrastructure studies, environmental criticism, research-based art and speculative design. The project outputs <https://againstcatastrophe.net/about> will include an edited volume, offline and online art/design exhibitions, and a series of online publications. As we were conceptualizing the project, Russia invaded Ukraine. Faced with the resulting humanitarian and geopolitical crisis, we felt a need to respond to the unfolding tragedy. With ‘Dispatches’ – a short-form, multimedia, online publishing format – we hope to move past the news cycle-based temporality of contemporary catastrophism, but faster than traditional academic publishing, to shed light on the longer-term structural causes and implications of catastrophes. In the first dispatch, on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, our intention is not to offer a single response to the immediate human tragedy, but to explore the war in and beyond the multiple catastrophes it has wrought. The six collected dispatches here – by Asia Bazdyrieva <https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/of-brushwood-reeds-and-foil>, Anna Engelhardt <https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/adversarial-infrastructures>, Krolikowski Art <https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/start-over>, Katarzyna Nowak <https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/mourning-a-forest-road>, Oleksiy Radynski <https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/nord-stream-studies>, and Jonathon Turnbull et al. <https://againstcatastrophe.net/dispatch-1/the-dogs-that-survived> – examine the infrastructural and environmental antecedents and impacts of the war. You can read the full editorial statement here: https://againstcatastrophe.net/editorial ‘Against Catastrophe’ is led by Dr. Orit Halpern, Lighthouse Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change at Technische Universität Dresden. The core project team <https://againstcatastrophe.net/ac-team> is based out of Concordia University (Montreal), MIT, and TU-Dresden. ‘Against Catastrophe’ is funded by Fonds de recherche du Québec and the Swiss National Science Foundation, and is part of the larger Governing Through Design research cluster. [Our apologies for crossposting] Regards, Sudipto Basu and Jan Dutkiewicz, on behalf of the 'Against Catastrophe' team Sudipto Basu PhD student, Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia (Montreal / Kolkata) https://concordia.academia.edu/SudiptoBasu