Rehearsing Future Worlds:Abolition Science Fiction for Collective Research Methods

Rehearsing Future Worlds: Abolition Science Fiction for Collective Research Methods

Workshop: https://criticalmedialab.ch/rehearsing-future-worlds/

Date: 03/12/2024

Description: The Infrastructural Rehearsals Project will introduce a methodology of syncing between social realities and science fiction (Kodwo Eshun). We will share some approaches to abolition science fiction as counter mapping practice for community based research. The workshop will practice writing experiments, collective decision syncing with the aim to reworld the places and spaces we inhabit when faced with the violence of the present world. With Helen V. Pritchard, Cristina Cochior, Cassandra Troyan and Femke Snelting.

To read before the workshop:

• Gelderloos, Peter (2022) The solutions are already here: Strategies for ecological revolution from below. Pluto Press. pages: Chapter 5: A Truly Different Future, pp. 173-189 (16 pages)
• Ed. Callum Copley. (2019) Reworlding: Ramallah, Short Science Fiction Stories from Palestine. Onomatopee pages: Introduction by Callum Copley, pp. 9-12; “Map 2.0” by Adele Jarrar, pp. 31-48

Additional Reading:

• Brown, adrienne maree; Imarisha Walidah, ed. (2015) Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. PAGES: “Evidence” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, pp. 33-42 & “Hollow” by Mia Mingus, pp. 109-122

Script

“Whenever we try to envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in speculative fiction. All organizing is science fiction. Organizers and activists dedicate their lives to creating and envisioning another world, or many other worlds—so what better venue for organizers to explore their work than science fiction stories?” —Walidah Imarisha, Introduction, Octavia's Brood

“The term reworlding is one I have given to the concerted effort of reimagining the places and spaces we inhabit through worldbuilding techniques...Whilst always being adjacent to worldbuilding, reworlding is the political application of worldbuilding. It is its deployment as a radical tool to deliberately instigate change in the world, generating a multiplicity of futures with which to affect the present positively. In generating a diversity of futures in the present and seeking to proliferate these worlds and narratives through the publication of a book, it is an attempt to change the course of history with a hope that as theorist Kwodo Eshun states, ‘social reality and science fiction create a feedback between each other’ ” (Eshun, 2003).

"A huge amount of resources have been spent to make it impossible for us to imagine a world free of capitalism, free of hierarchy, free of the institutions that originated in colonialism. As such, the only kind of imaginary that is articulated and practiced in dominant society is that of the technocratic engineer drafting blueprints onto a passive territory. One of the most potent weapons against such interventionism is situated imagining, looking at the world around us, tracing the relations we have and could have, listening to their needs, and giving those needs free rein to develop, to see what directions they pull us in" (Gelderloos, 173).

Part one - Abolition Science Fiction

15.05: Welcome, why this is happening as part of Infrastructural Rehearsals

15.10: Abolitionism, an intro, some quotes, relevance for practices

15.20: Writing Exercise, Intro

15.25-15.45: 20 minutes to do the workshop exercise

Rehearsing Future Worlds: Abolition Science Fiction for Collective Research

Influenced by the Reworlding: Ramallah -- Short Science Fiction Stories from Palestine collection, the short story "Map 2.0" by Adele Jarrar, and an exercise in Abolition Science Fiction.

In Adele Jarrar's "Map 2.0," the potential changes proposed by those in the future to stop the Nakba from happening in 1948 had to move beyond only stopping Zionist militias in individual villages, "If we're going to change anything, it has to be something that we know will have a dramatic, positive effect" (Jarrar, 46).

Taking influence from the short story, write a bullet pointed list with at least five interventions into the past, which would change extractive genocidal capitalist authoritarianism in the present. Remember that even seemingly small actions can still have a large impact on how history would unfold. Use that to your advantage.

These are proposals that you will collectively discuss and then work through together in Part Two. There are no incorrect interventions or suggestions! This is an exercise to envision other worlds beyond what might seem feasible or possible in our present reality.

When doing so consider the following:

- What would change in society as a result of these interventions and what would remain the same?

- How do people live now as a result of these changes?

- What are the consequences for ecosystems and non-human life?

- Try to be as specific as possible, while addressing the different facets of society (social, economic, ecological, political) where these changes would need to take place.

Part two - Collective Research Decision making on Directions for the present

15:45 Intro: why this exercise, and where it came from. Consensus decision making process vs consensus reaching process. Meet in pairs, then 4, then 8 to agree on an action for the past that would change something in the present.. based on the stories you have written.. agree on on several action....

15:55 start round 1 (2p)

16:05 start round 2 (4p)

16:20 start round 3 (8p)

16:40 share, feedback, observations, reflections

17:00 end