GENERATIVE DEVICE OF CONTEMPORARY FUTURES
The contemporary crisis in Europe and the development of austerity as an economic, political and ideological project has strongly impacted people´s everyday lives, worldviews, and ways of coexistence. In this context of increasing precariousness and break down of social rights and welfare, displacement (across places, environments and/or social spheres) has become a key paradigm. The processes of displacement-placement/dislocation-relocation shape specific subjectivities, particular forms of belonging and relating to others. Cities, where labour and education opportunities as well as reception networks for newcomers are mostly located, become the principal settings where these processes concentrate and unfold, giving form to new dynamics of space production and signification. The displaced subject (who represents a heterogeneous multitude of individuals) is today a critical actor in our cities.
There are two major contemporary phenomena that help the displaced subject to overcome the feelings of isolation, disconnectedness or disorientation throughout the process of moving and settling in. One is the use of interactive devices of communication, which become mediators of personal and social relationships, as well as important tools of navigation in the new environment. The other is the series of grassroots initiatives and community-inspired actions of mutual support and common struggle, which have emerged and multiplied in many cities during the crisis. Both phenomena foster practices of collective action, contributing to the creation of collectivities whose members do not necessarily share the same identity or cultural backgrounds. These practices specifically use and reconfigure city space, which conversely becomes an essential element for their development and reproduction. Thereby, the displaced subject becomes part of a collective-self constantly in-the-making who reproduces itself through/by socio-spatial practices.
We (the authors) seek to explore the aforementioned phenomena and find common grounds in which the different subject/subjectivities in displacement can find aspects of self-recognition in/through the other, moments of empathy and connectedness, and eventually the desire of coming together in joint projects and struggles. For these purposes, we propose a spatial device in/through which different displaced subjects can gather to project themselves collectively onto a common desirable future. Also as subjects in-the-move or subjects in-the-making, we think that the collective construction of future imaginaries can help all of us to dwell in/on an unstable present, and serve as compasses to provide orientation and give meaning to our daily actions, experiences and interactions.
CONTEXT
DESCRIPTION
The Generative Device of Contemporary Futures (GPCF) is based on a spatial device that works as a tool to generate collective future imaginaries for the displaced subject. The GPCF will give form and setting to a series of ephemeral scenarios of encounter and collective imagination/negotiation between different individuals in a transitory condition.
Each event will host a group conversation, departing from an imaged situation set up in a near and desirable future of which all the members of the group are part. Given that pre-established specific future scenario, the mission will be to jointly produce a narrative about the process(es) of its construction that can reach and be usable by a wide public. We will have to negotiate the tracing of the imagined path(s) that we would have had to undertake to arrive to that future from year 2017 (a past that we will be remembering). We will also put into question its own desirability. Varying situations, events and interpretations may arise stemming from the different and multiple desires and problems present in 2017. In each event, the future deliberated will address different topics according to four main areas of reproduction of our everyday lives (food, care, sexuality and housing). These are main areas in which emerging grassroots collectives are currently introducing transformative and inspiring practices.
The device will be tailored to the different themes and discussion groups in each event. It will be comprised on the one hand by material elements related to the creation of desire and stimulation of imagination (soft surfaces, artificial grass, colours, lights, scents). On the other, by interactive devices of communication (mobile phones, tablets, digital pads) and technological recording devices (video and photo cameras, voice recorders), which will serve to set up online talks, make use of visual materials on the internet, draw, sketch, note down and produce a register(s). The material (discursive, audio-visual and graphic) produced in each event will be placed on this website, which aims to become the open archive of the collectively created imaginaries of a common future.
As such, in each event a sort of abstract landscape will be set up, whose materiality responds to two purposes: the creation of a comfortable and welcoming space to come together with other people to produce a specific future narrative, and a space that can assist that collective fictional construction and register the different outcomes. By playing and subverting the politics of technological devices of communication, learning from the experiences of grassroots social initiatives, and foremost, inspired by the myriad stories (personal and collective) that shape these social spaces, the GPCF hopes to become a tool to produce common dreams and strategies. The GPCF aims to temporarily create a space for different displaced subjects to encounter and become mutually aware of each other, therefore, a space initially not identified by/with any of them, but developed and concretized through the time of mutual exchange.