Description Coming Soon

Who owns the future? This course will examine the politics, power, methods and aesthetics related to conceptualizing the future, and giving those ideas form in the present. Visions of the future most notably reflect hopes and expectations, along with biases and conflicts inherent in the current time, so being able to project oneself and one's community into the future is a political act. The course will explore how different models of the future, created by artists, speculative designers, science fiction writers and governments can be analyzed and hacked. Students will consider how the idea of speculation relates to their own creative practice, engage in a process of worldbuilding to frame a prospective future, and create work that provides a portal to that imagining. Through engaging with work by writers & theorists such as Ruha Benjamin, Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Donna Harraway, Saidiya Hartman and José Esteban Muñoz; and artists & filmmakers such as Jefferson Pinder, Cannupa Hanska, Ari Melenciano and Hito Steyerl - we will explore ideas such as somatic storytelling, backcasting, mental time travel and Queer Futurity. The course includes weekly readings & viewings, in-class workshops, group research, and an individual final project that will begin with worldbuilding and culminate in aesthetic form.