Practical Utopia Directorate within the Cabinet of Futures: A series of events and exercises to develop utopian literacy
Cabinet of Futures (CoF), brought to you by the Austrian art and culture group Time’s Up, offers, in addition to the main exhibition, three blocks of events to train your practical utopian capabilities. Each block will engage with a different theme. The three thematic blocks, consisting of three different formats per block, enable participants to think out loud about possible futures, engage with, imagine and discuss them in order to allow a better today.
These events allow those who attend all formats a variety of immersions in speculative foresight experiences, those only attending one format a unique self-contained experience.
Each event allows participants to develop their capacity for anticipation of practical utopias, by which we mean plausible and preferable possible futures. The events are based upon and encourage a playful approach to imagining practical utopias, they are easy to attend and reinforce an open appreciation of multiple future possibilities.
The Radical Recycling/Circular Economy block consists of:
- Practical Utopia from Afar: Local experts will discuss themes around waste and stuff in the wrong place. A public talk for an interested general audience.
- A Practical Utopian Moment: (max 20 people) A three hour workshop which offers an introduction to speculative design techniques for experiential futures, exploring Time’s Up’s experiences while guiding participants through an engaging process. This will be a participative, playful and entertaining experience for the attendees to train their imagination and receive an introduction to simple futuring techniques.
- An Afternoon Spent in a Practical Utopian State of Mind: (max 20 people) A full day workshop in which participants will be engaged in developing more in-depth alternative future scenarios. This will introduce attendees to a wider range of futuring techniques. They will be guided through a process of creating viable future scenarios, imagining characters and stories in these and then developing artefacts for experiential futures, things that might be found in the everyday life of a person in that possible future.
Dates and times:
Practical Utopia from Afar: 1st of September 2018, 6pm at Studio Solipsis, Rabat
A Practical Utopian Moment workshop: 2nd of September 2018, 2-5pm at St Joseph the Worker Parish Centre, Birkirkara
An Afternoon Spent in a Practical Utopian State of Mind workshop: 3rd of September 2018, 10am-5pm at St Joseph the Worker Parish Centre, Birkirkara
Information about the other event blocks in November will be made available in September.
To apply for the workshops, click on the following link. Minimum age for participation: 16. All blocks are independent of each other – one may attend one, two or all, however this is not a requirement as no continuity is needed. Applications close on the 31st of August, noon OR when spots have been filled. All events are free of charge.
About Radical Recycling / Circular Economy:
Before we submerge ourselves and drown in our own waste, we could consider and create systems that allow the minimisation of outputs of waste or even better allowing outputs from one system as inputs for another, as the rest of the planetary ecosystems manage things. The connections between Economy and Ecology become clear as complementary and connected ways of thinking about our (extended) households, biomimicry on a systems level becomes important, as investigated by Janine Benyus and others.
This block will use biological systems to think about waste and want, imagining society as a garden or a forest where all parts have a role to play and there is no such thing as waste, just stuff in the wrong place.
Should you have any questions, email [email protected].
Cabinet of Futures is supported by The Arts and Culture Division of the Federal Chancellery of Austria, Linz Kultur, OOE Kultur, LINZ AG and Ecoduna.