Sound Playground
Generative Device of Contemporary Futures
Athens - London
2017
Together with Jorge Martín García
Dear guest,
It is with great pleasure that we write to invite you to participate in the first session of the Generative Device of Contemporary Futures project that will take place on February.
The Generative Device of Contemporary Futures (GPCF) project will give form and setting to a series of ephemeral scenarios of encounter and collective imagination/negotiation between different individuals in a transitory condition. Its vocation is participatory, experimental and political. As such, each participant becomes a co-producer of the project.
Each event will host a group conversation, departing from an imaged situation/scenario set up in a desirable future of which all the members of the group are part. In each event, the future scenario 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.
Interactive devices of communication (mobile phones, tablets, digital pads) and technological recording devices (video/photo cameras, voice recorders) will serve to establish online communications (with people in the past in 2017), make use of visual materials on the internet, draw, sketch, note down and produce a register(s).
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.
Additional information about the project can be found on the website: https://padlet.com/contemporaryfuturesdevice/Bookmarks For instructions for the first session, please, turn over this card.
Ahead the date of the event, you are kindly asked to pick one among the different future scenarios that you can find on the online archive. You are also very welcomed to add your own future scenario and contribute to the expansion of the GDCF archive. The future scenario preferred by the majority of invited participants will be the one that will be enacted collectively by the group.
On the date of the event, each of you will be an active member of the selected future scenario (which will turn into the present). Please, feel free to choose your own role or position within the group according to your personal preferences. As a group, you will have to introduce that present project that you are now part of to a newcomer, who will make questions about it.
Additionally, there will be an online-video connection with a person from the past in 2017. That person will share with you personal concerns, which make her/him be interested in your project. Thinking of how she/he would be able to embark in such a project, she/he will ask each of you about your specific personal experience throughout the time you have been part of it. Her/his main interest focuses more on how the project has developed and the journey of each of you into/through it, than on the project itself as it stands at the present moment. Therefore, you may expect questions as: When and why did you join the project? What is your role in it? How did you acquire it? How much time do you devote to the project weekly? Was it always like this? Do you have any other occupations? What was the most difficult thing for you at the beginning? How did you deal with that difficulty? What was the moment or situation most difficult to sort out? Why? Was it solved in the end? How? What has been the most exiting or important moment for you? What is the thing you like the most about the space? Why? Have you learnt to do anything that you did not know before?
We hope you are able to accept this invitation. We have thought you may enjoy taking part in the GDCF project and that your contribution would be especially enriching. Looking forward to hearing from you.
