Speculative Futures – CreaTures https://creatures-eu.org Creative Practices For Transformational Futures Sat, 11 Feb 2023 21:31:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.10 Refuge for Resurgence https://creatures-eu.org/productions/refuge/ Thu, 03 Dec 2020 20:47:19 +0000 https://creatures-eu.org/?post_type=productions&p=252 Refuge for Resurgence, a multispecies dining experience with animals, birds, plants and fungi, was shown as part of the Biennale Architettura, La Biennale Di Venezia 2021 from 22nd May to 21st November 2021. As part of Superflux’s ongoing mission to explore hope through crisis towards a more-than-human future, Venice Biennale visitors were invited to a dinner table around which multiple species metaphorically gather as equals. In response to the Biennale’s theme How Will We Live Together? Refuge for Resurgence considered how all forms of life on earth might come together to celebrate their ecological interdependence in a post-Anthropocene world – a symbolic home where all species can prosper with resilience, adaptation, and hope.

The Refuge for Resurgence film (Superflux, 2021).

Refuge for Resurgence presents a four-meter-long table, hand-made in Didcot (UK) from the wood of a wild Surrey oak tree in collaboration with Gareth Huw Lewis of Classic Watercraft. Placed around the table are fourteen wooden stools, each one carefully customised to suit its intended occupant. As the viewer enters the space, they are beckoned by a bespoke soundscape, a chorus recital of a poem that brings the story of the banquet, and its mythological origin story, powerfully to life.

Each species occupies a custom designed stool and table setting (image credit: Giorgio Lazzaro).

The banquet attendees represent a cross-section of life on a resurgent Earth; inclusive of species that were once domesticated, or might have been considered ‘weeds’, ‘pests’ or ‘vermin’ under human domination, but are now reclaiming their rightful place in the ecological order. Around this table, three humans – man, woman and child – join a fox, rat, wasp, pigeon, cow, wild boar, snake, beaver, wolf, raven and mushroom.

Each creature has a place set at the table, but only the wasp, mushroom and raven (in taxidermied form) physically join the installation. By exploring each place around the table, the viewer can infer the identity of the guests from finely detailed clues on display. These include species-symbolic cutlery, hand-crafted from materials foraged from a former world (avian bones, brake lights, twigs, a rusted circuit board or telephone wire); food offerings carefully catered for each guest; and ceramic plates meticulously illustrated by illustrator Nicola Ferrao with mythopoetic scenes depicting the species protagonists and their narrative journeys, from destruction to resurgence.

“We’re drawing on ideas of folklore, mythology, the transformative potential of ritual and ceremony. We want to open up poetic aspects of other worlds that might feel enigmatic – or even magical. This is an invocation and a prayer for a different kind of world.”

– Jon Ardern, co-founder, Superflux

The table sits beneath a trio of suspended LCD screens that form a triptych window onto the world outside. Created by designer Sebastien Tiew, the windows reveal a cityscape in the aftermath of catastrophe – streets are flooded, buildings lie in ruins, the urban fabric lies shredded – but the vision is far from dystopian.

Green plants and trees are creeping in to reclaim the city, and the wildlife that was previously barred from human spaces is finding its way back to the streets and making a new home. From the perspective of the creatures at the banquet, nature is building a new world from the wreckage of the old. Their task is to work together and find their respective places within it.

“Our proposal for a way out of this dilemma is to completely change the way we view ourselves and our relationship with nature. Instead of seeing humans as separate from nature, we need to understand that we are a part of it. By radically changing our attitude toward natural systems and the ecology of our planet, we have the best chance to reverse the damage we’ve done. How might we – humans and non-humans – truly engage in collaborative living?”

– Anab Jain, co-founder, Superflux

The Refuge for Resurgence installation and conceptual background were captured in a short film released by Superflux in July 2021. The intention here was to give remote viewers an immersive experience akin to being within the exhibition space. The film was showcased at the CreaTures Festival in Seville, Spain (June – July 2022). After its initial showcase at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Refuge for Resurgence installation appeared at the following exhibitions: Subject to Change, Droog Gallery, Amsterdam (February – April 2022), Weather Engines, Onassis Stegi, Athens (April – May 2022) and Our Time on Earth, Barbican Curve Gallery, London (May – August 2022). 

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Invocation for Hope https://creatures-eu.org/productions/invocation/ Wed, 02 Dec 2020 20:52:20 +0000 https://creatures-eu.org/?post_type=productions&p=256 Invocation for Hope is an immersive installation designed for the occasion of the Vienna Biennale for Change 2021 by the London-based design studio Superflux. On show at the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna (MAK) from 28 May to 3 October 2021, the installation responds to the biennale’s theme Planet Love: Climate Care in the Digital Age by generating new visions of a shared planet.

Invocation for Hope invites humanity to reassess its place in the natural world. To emerge from the ashes of fire-blackened trees into resurgent greenery – and a glistening pool with a surprise below the surface. The vast, immersive installation examines the complex interconnected relationships throughout the natural world, and raises the possibility of a more-than-human future – a post-anthropocentric planet in which humanity is just one part of a dynamic and multifaceted ecosystem. Audiences are invited to travel through a grid of burnt and blackened pines, salvaged from a recent wildfire, towards a resurgent living forest at its center, where multiple species living in harmony with humanity offer a promise of a new way of living.

Invocation for Hope is an immersive installation addressing climate crisis with hope (image credit: Stephan Lux)

In this cradle of biodiversity, you come to a freshwater pool, which reflects, not your own face, but another creature – a bison, an otter, a bird of prey – coming to the water to drink. The pool is surrounded by a cluster of nearly thirty different living trees, including oak, hornbeam, apple, silver birch, and mounds of biodiversity where mosses, grasses, lichens and shrubs grow symbiotically together over the course of the installation. These living ecologies are nourished by regular watering, grow lamps, and natural light from the large skylight on the museum ceiling.

The installation leads viewers on a personal journey from the ravages of climate crisis to the possibility of renewal and a deeper connection with nature (image credit: Stephan Lux).

Accompanied by a soundscape created by visionary musician Cosmo Sheldrake, the installation leads viewers one by one on a personal journey from the ravages of the climate crisis to the possibility of renewal and a deeper connection with nature. Wild maples, oaks, birches, and larches spring up and around mosses, ferns, and lichens. Sounds of bird and animal orchestras begin to fill the forest.

With the pool in its heart, this resurgent forest gives visitors the chance to reflect on their place in this more-than-human world – a part of the planet, not masters of it. Encouraging people to reflect on our fragile, interconnected relationship with the natural world, Invocation for Hope explores opportunities to create practices of more-than-human care for our climate-altered futures through ideas around resurgence, redistribution, reparation, and rewilding.

Superflux considers the climate crisis to be what philosopher Timothy Morton calls a hyperobject – a phenomenon of such spatial and temporal scale that it is beyond the capacity of the human mind to fully grasp it. Invocation for Hope explores the complexity of climate change as a hyperobject, making it resonant and meaningful and finding pathways of hope amid disaster. The starting point for the installation is the idea that climate change is the inevitable result of a worldview that sees nature as an exploitable resource rather than a complex and interconnected system of life.

“Climate change is not a problem we can ‘solve’ but rather a predicament we must navigate with responsibility and urgency.”

Jon Ardern, co-founder Superflux

The creation of Invocation for Hope required the installation of more than 400 trees within the MAK. In collaboration with the forestry and fire departments of Austria’s Neunkirchen region, trees that had been burned in a recent wildfire were salvaged and transported to the museum. One of the main contributors to the spread of wildfires is an approach to forestry that prioritises monoculture as a means of maximising yield – single-species forests burn faster. As the result of a human attempt to exert control over nature, the fire-blackened forest serves as a synecdoche for anthropogenic climate change as a whole.

The trees in the installation are arranged in a symmetric grid so, as the viewer passes through them to the living oasis at the centre of the installation, they move from an imposed, rigid order to the organic exuberance of nature. The pool at the centre is surrounded by a cluster of nearly thirty different living trees, including oak, hornbeam, apple, silver birch, and mounds of biodiversity where mosses, grasses, lichens and shrubs will grow symbiotically together over the course of the installation. These living ecologies are nourished by regular watering, grow lamps and natural light from the large skylight on the museum ceiling. 

Superflux’s practice does not merely consider ways of avoiding climate crisis but looks beyond ecological collapse, into the more-than-human future. Invocation of Hope can thus be seen as a companion piece to the studio’s other CreaTures ExP and contribution to La Biennale di Venezia 2021: Refuge for Resurgence. Superflux explores the relationship and impact of man and the environment through its mytho-poetic framework: Instead of a direct representation of the dynamics of this relationship, the installation takes a more abstract and symbolic position.

“Our proposal for a way out of this dilemma is to completely change the way we view ourselves and our relationship with nature. Instead of seeing humans as separate from nature, we need to understand that we are a part of it. By radically changing our attitude toward natural systems and the ecology of our planet, we have the best chance to reverse the damage we’ve done. How might we – humans and non-humans – truly engage in collaborative living?”

Anab Jain, co-founder Superflux

A freshwater pool in the heart of the forest reflects faces of non-human creatures (image credit: Gregor Hofbauer).

In keeping with the message of the work and the theme of the Biennale, every component of the installation was designed to live on after the event, with the aim of neutralising the carbon footprint made during its development and implementation. Once the Biennale ended in October 2022, the living trees were donated to schools. The burnt trees were used as compost for a garden of contemplation in Vienna, helping to enrich the biodiversity of the urban landscape – a lasting reminder of the web of interdependence that underpins all life on earth. The hope of Superflux is that this space continues, in the same way as the installation did, to be a place for people to reconsider and reflect on their relationship to nature. 

Superflux also produced a short film of the exhibition, with the intention of giving remote viewers an experience akin to being within the exhibition space. The film was released in July 2021 and distributed widely. The film was also showcased at the CreaTures Festival in Seville, Spain from June to July 2022. 

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Sustainable Futures Game https://creatures-eu.org/productions/sfg/ Tue, 01 Dec 2020 18:52:00 +0000 https://creatures-eu.org/?post_type=productions&p=234 Accelerating sustainability transitions requires imagination and creativity to concretise desirable futures narratives. For this purpose, Hellon designed the Sustainable Futures Game to focus on connecting societal sustainability goals with everyday organisational contexts and help build organisations’ capabilities for imagining alternative futures. The game is designed for decision makers and developers within public and private organisations, offering a creative and holistic approach to address sustainability challenges.

The game aims to help players co-imagine a desirable future state of a collectively decided city in 2030 through fictional storytelling and design prompts and then back-cast ways to tackle critical challenges to reach the co-narrated future. As the story is co-narrated, the outcome of each game session varies depending on the participants’ interests and aspirations. This diversity of perspectives helps the players to find new opportunities and create novel pathways for reaching desirable futures.

Sustainable Futures Game film introducing the project’s scope and motivations (Hellon, 2022).

The development of the game started from the motivation to foster desirable futures and feasible pathways towards them, while avoiding the production of disempowering dystopian or utopian narratives. Decision makers in business and public institutions were chosen as the preliminary target group for the game with the aim of influencing sustainable organisational transformations.

At the beginning of 2019, Hellon sought opportunities to contribute to social and ecological sustainability in partnership with other creative agencies and research institutes. Joining the CreaTures consortium in 2020 enabled Hellon to explore this endeavour in depth. The Sustainable Futures Game is inspired by Hellon’s two previous projects: Nordic Urban Mobility 2050 Futures Game for Nordic Innovation (2019) and the Opportunities for Finland Report for the Finnish Government (2018 – 2019). These experiences strengthened Hellon’s conviction on the need for novel processes to aid collaborative explorations of sustainable futures through creative methods and imagination. 

The Sustainable Futures Game can be played both physically and digitally, by eight to ten persons at a time. A game session starts with an introductory presentation by Hellon facilitators to prepare the players and introduce the key terms and concepts of the game. The gameplay occurs in two parts.

Details of the Sustainability Futures Game board (image credit: Hellon).

In the first part, players collectively imagine a fictional story set in 2030, which depicts a desirable near future state of a selected city. The fictional story unfolds through player discussions supported by various probing tools including. The main objective of this first part of the game is to facilitate a dialog on desirable futures and collectively imagine a fictional story that integrates multifaceted characteristics of this future narrative, such as personal desires, societal norms, and political structures.

In the second part, players identify critical challenges and barriers that restrict or hinder their co-narrated desirable futures from materialising. The game session results in concrete, action-oriented suggestions on what type of activities should be implemented today to overcome the identified barriers and move towards the co-imagined future.

The Sustainable Futures Game can be seen as an example of futures-oriented design games that help participants make abstract and ambiguous topics more engaging and personal by incorporating creative methods such as improvisation, fictional storytelling, visual prompts, and creative ideation.

From August – November 2020, the first game prototypes were tested in a series of pilot game sessions with partners from the CreaTures project and other stakeholders of diverse backgrounds, including sustainability experts, system designers, service designers, and business leaders. After each game session, Hellon’s design team reflected on the insights received from participants’ feedback to revise the game logic and elements.

The first public game session took place in November 2020 and invited members of the FIBS (Finnish Business & Society Corporate Responsibility Network– the largest corporate responsibility network in the Nordic countries. In May 2021 – 2022, four additional sessions were organised with diverse players including, among others, Laurea University of Applied Sciences service design students and members of the Finnish parliamentary Green Party.

The Sustainable Futures Game installation at the Helsinki Design Week 2022 – Designs for Cooler Planet exhibition (image credit: Savannah Vize).

In June 2022, Hellon created a short film summarising the game’s conceptual background, motivations and key principles. The Sustainable Futures Game board and film were exhibited at the CreaTures Festival in Seville, Spain (June – July 2022) and at the Helsinki Design Week 2022 – Designs for Cooler Planet exhibition in Espoo, Finland, as part of the CreaTures project showcase (September – October 2022).

The Sustainable Futures Game installation at the Helsinki Design Week 2022 – Designs for Cooler Planet exhibition (image credit: Savannah Vize).

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reProductive Narratives https://creatures-eu.org/productions/rn/ Wed, 04 Mar 2020 20:26:46 +0000 https://creatures-eu.org/?post_type=productions&p=241 The reProductive Narratives project uses an artistic metaphor to describe social phenomenologies related to the recognition and appreciation of the female body as a production facility of new life. In the art project, which is situated in a laboratory setting, the project co-author Maja Smrekar experiments with her menstrual blood – a socially stigmatized female excrement – as material for artistic expression and later for reflective conversations, which take place after the laboratory work, in a public setting. In collaboration with scientist and artist Gjino Šutić, the aim of the project is to open a space for reflection and speculation on the existing and imagined reproductive functions of the female body.

A reProductive Narratives video discussing the project’s scope was produced by Kersnikova in 2021. 

The spread of contemporary populist ideologies linked to national and ethnic boundaries has increasingly focused on issues of birth rate. Here, the female body is cast as the property of the state through legal and ideological means. Through their hands-on biohacking research & practice-based process, The reProductive Narratives authors aim to encourage strategic alliances employing hormones and bodily fluids as non-invasive (bio)technologies, and as narrative agents, via pharmacological and technological tools. A further objective of the reProductive Narratives project is to engage citizens in critical dialogue and knowledge exchange about reproductive politics.

Within their laboratory work, Maja and Gjino experimented with isolating differentiated cells from Maja’s menstrual discharge and cultivating those inside growth media containing hormones extracted from her urine. Prior to the laboratory phase, Maja collected her menstrual discharge for a period of 24 months (this biomaterial was stored in a Vitrification Medium at -20 degrees Celsius). Following this, the biomaterial was centrifuged and subsequently cultured. These cultures were inspected and a growth medium added before being placed in a bioreactor. Morphological alteration was then induced in the biomaterial via transfection with a synthetic follicular-like fluid produced using gonadotropin extracted (via chromatography) from Maja’s urine. These cells were then cryopreserved.

The laboratory work took place from November 2020 – February  2021 in the BioTehna Lab and Kapelica gallery (Ljubljana, Slovenia), and Universal Research Institute (Zagreb, Croatia). The laboratory procedures followed a research protocol published in 2016 by the International Peace Maternity and Child Health Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and collaborators in China. These procedures have shown the possibility of extracting somatic cells from menstrual discharge. The extracted cells may show egg-like properties (specific protein structure), raising a myriad of possibilities for speculation regarding the existing and imagined reproductive functions of the female body.

On the 26th of November 2020, Kersnikova organised an online panel discussion on the reProductive Narratives project, featuring the artists Maja Smrekar and Gjino Šutić together with a guest artist Margherita Pevere. The session was organised within Kersnikova’s Freaktion Bar series and moderated by the writer, philosopher and critic Mojca Kumerdej:

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