Period
2018
Proposed by
Paul O’Neill
Location
Amsterdam
About the project
The opening of the exhibition Creating Other Futures in January 2018 in Amsterdam was the kick-off of the multidisciplinary platform Other Futures. We bring together thinkers and builders of other futures. The themes are urgent: our relation with the planet and the ‘Other’, emancipation, diversity, queer futures, postcolonial theories and practices. The first edition was dedicated to participants from non-Western countries, with a focus on Africa and the African diaspora. We had a special screening, a SF-writer’s workshop, a storytellers’ day on climate action and a 3-day festival with 80 writers, musicians, filmmakers, artists, performers and thinkers from all over the world. Together we explored an approach to the future that is humane and open to contact with others, whether they be people, transhumans, aliens or spirits. We showed works that deal with typical SF tropes like alternate realities, alternative histories and sciences, multiverses, apocalypse, time travel and contact with the Other from the perspective that abduction and suppression, conquest and annihilation is not fiction but was and still is a reality for many people in the world. Other Futures enables us not only to imagine possible futures and new panoramas, but also to create them.
The research started in 2014, from 2016 the team grew to 16 freelancers with different backgrounds and cultures who developed Other Futures together at their own risk. A broad spectrum of partners joined us, from universities and book centers to public and private funds. Leading up to the second edition in 2020 in Amsterdam, we’ll organize events in The Netherlands and abroad. Asia will be the focus for 2020, the themes are the relations between human-nonhuman and how to build a multispecies community.
Links
Video: “Other Futures” 2018
Instagram: Other Futures
Facebook: Other Futures
External links
About the artist
In the early 90's Brigitte van der Sande started an ongoing research into the representation of war in art, resulting in exhibitions and events, as well as lectures, workshops and essays. While travelling in war and conflict zones she discovered a growing amount of critical, witty and activist science fiction. In countries where there is no freedom of information, SF has become an alternative journalist genre that leaves the censors baffled. Other Futures was born.
