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Photo by Caitlin Kittredge, 2010
Cherie Priest
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Photo by Libby Bulloff
Cherie Priest
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Photo by Libby Bulloff
Cherie Priest
Another draw of steampunk, Priest says, is the “appeal of analog.”
“As our technology becomes more and more powerful, it becomes less and less accessible,” Priest says.
“Right now, I'm talking to you on an iPhone, and I can use it to see myself from space, but God help me if I drop it in the bathtub. As technology becomes more powerful, we become more detached from it, and less and less able to repair our own tools.
“Coming from the Southeast, where I've seen a lot of Civil War reenactments, I've met reenactors who have 150-year-old guns that still work. They have tools that were built by their great-grandparents. The grid goes down—what still works? Well, it's the analog tools. The Victorians were building tools and clothing and technology and houses, you name it, without the concept of planned obsolescence. When they built something, they made it to last. “
Priest even feels that the steampunk has a similar appeal as zombie fiction, which perhaps explains how she came up with Boneshaker’s premise.
“There's the idea of when the zombie apocalypse comes, how do you survive? What do you do?” Priest says. “Well, you return to the analog. You get yourself a crowbar or a shotgun and you start from there, because technology doesn't work. And this is speaking as someone who goes into panic when she has to go 10 minutes without the Internet.
“Steampunk isn't a hardcore survivalist movement, but it is an interest in the craft and consumption of the things we buy, and learning how to make things, and taking an interest in what we buy, because so much of what we buy is made far away from where we live, and we have no idea how it's made. It really feels like an idea whose time has come.”
And if you still don't believe her, you can always go to ConTemporal and ask her yourself.
Priest appears at ConTemporal through Sunday, June 24. For more information, visit www.contemporal.org.