Constant

SpecXcraft book launch

Donatella — 2024-05-31T10:47:05Z

We are delighted to invite you to the book launch of specXcraft's collective publication (EN/FR): Speculative crafting for un/common futures in Brussels | Fabriquer collectivement d'im/possibles futurs pour Bruxelles

This is a polyphonic account in words and images of the work that four Brussels associations carried out over 18 months. Natagora, Centre Vidéo Bruxelles, Constant and Espèces Urbaines/Urban Species looked for more situated, relevant, and collective ways of imagining the future of Brussels. They did this based on their respective practices and struggles, their commitments to environmental in/justice, social in/justice, technological in/justice, and epistemological in/justice, in Brussels.

This project and its publication have been funded by Innoviris/Cocreate.

Come and find out more about this work on Monday 27 May, from 5.30-7.30 pm at the ULB Faculty of Architecture (auditoire Victor Bourgeois, ground floor).
*kids and other companion species are welcome*

SpecXcraft Diplomacy Session

Donatella — 2024-03-20T10:21:11Z

In the framework of the co-creative research project Speculative crafting for un/common futures (Specxcraft), the 4 Brussels-based organisations, Urban Species, Natagora, Centre Vidéo Bruxelles, Constant and their allies, came together to share the results of 4 internal workshops.

These workshops took place in the course of 2024 with the members of each organisation and they were aimed to imagine narratives of future scenarios that escape the actual crisis we fell are hunting our reality. The results of these collective re-writing / re-imagining were presented in different format (videos, postcards, notebooks) and opened up the way to many interesting discussions and cross-thinking.

Open call for the symposium : Cybioses – life in the future imperfect

mia — 2023-01-10T14:43:28Z

Between 2 and 5 March 2023 Constant will collaborate with JV 24 and SpecXcraft on a winter symposium about "slow futures" called Cybioses – life in the future imperfect.

The full open call can be read here: https://www.nsuweb.org/study-circles/circle-2-cybioses-life-in-the-future-imperfect/

An excerpt:

We invite scholars, artists, students, technologists and other professionals working or writing on future technologies to take part in our Cybioses study circle which is part of the Nordic Summer University, a migratory non-hierarchical group of international researchers.

The winter symposium on "slow futures" will be the first session of a three year symposium series. In this iteration Cybioses want to look into the impact of "slow futures" figurations in science, technology, media and art. Bringing the potential of such "slow futures" to the foreground undermines the premise that speed is characteristic of technological change and that constant social pressure underpins technological disruption, economic growth, and an ability to be detached from its impact on material worlds of great complexity. Therefore, Cybioses welcome both critiques of such "linearity" and affirmation of the value of "slow futures", their imagination and practice. We hope this topic will continue, deepen and re-new our collaborations with artists, hackers, designers, technologists, theorists and more. We are open to various formats of presentation, creative contributions and experimental forms of sharing knowledge.

Deadline for abstracts: Friday the 23th of January, 2023

View online : https://www.nsuweb.org/study-circle...

SpecXcraft

mia — 2022-10-26T12:22:49Z

Speculative crafting for un/common futures, or Specxcraft for short, is a co-creative, artistic research project between 4 Brussels-based organisations: Urban Species, Natagora, Centre Vidéo Bruxelles and Constant. Using concepts from SF (sci-fi and speculative fabulation) and methods of crafting and prototyping the project tries to find answers to the following research question: Can fostering a particular form of imagination - speculative, embodied, materialised, responsible and multi-situated - lead to less resignation and more resilience facing Brussels' future and its multiple crises?

More specifically, can the co-creative training and crafting of a 'speculative imagination' reconfigure aspirations, fears and values that are opposed - or on the contrary allied - in Brussels debates today?

Specxcraft starts from the hypothesis that the capacity of imagining futures and projecting oneself into the consequences of present situations and choices is a citizen's pivotal skill in the current context, continuously confronted with the threat of crises; and that the pluralisation of imaginaries of futures, working with underrepresented publics, constitutes a cornerstone of the democratic character of Brussels public action.

The project is funded by the Innoviris Co-create grant and will run from September 2022 to February 2024.