Three Part Notes On Afro-Futurist World Building strategies-
As a final contribution to the 2020 Afrotectopia Imagineer fellowship, I decided to write a text that looks back at three ideas developed during the fellowship. Although not directly connected to one another each exploration will give you a good example on how to approach afro-futurist world building strategies.
[1.New spaces for learning (local scale) /2.From re-appropriating to making (urban scale)/3.Working in multi-disciplinary communities. ]
1-School is out! From affordable remote learning tools to new
This first section of the text, deals with the idea of taking advantage of an exceptional situation that is, a priori disadvantageous or unequal to the community in question. This can be done first, at a rather local scale that will guide us to approach the bigger questions of the essay scaling up as we’ll move through each one of them. This reflection, is based on the very first subject(1) of reflection that was conducted at the Imaginarium.
As remote-learning in the past few months, became a standard in most education programmes, the tools that give access to it (computer-phone-sufficient internet connection), in the same way became essential for pedagogical continuity. Another substantial budget for families valued of an approximate amount of 200$/year.
If we take for instance, the softwares that allow for this remote-learning condition, and that, due to the unpredictability and immediacy of the 2020 corona crisis, those are now considered as the current standard. This is just another example of how whiteness becomes a standard for innovation because it is embedded in its very interface as American Artist(2) mentions in one of his recent performance.
In this context, we tried to imagine self-sustaining economic models for educational institutions that could in that way promote sufficient, culturally relevant and accessible tools for the student community.
1- Reprogramming unused spaces, and transform them into some sort of spatial income that would be directly reinvested in the educational community. 2-Investing in new spaces as ground for alternative learning and culturally adapted teaching. 3- Support and promote alternative digital learning tools, so to move away from giants of the sector. In favour of locally based softwares, that can store school material and process locally stored data fester.
Once remote learning tools are redistributed more equally, the question of the disappearance of the very spaces for learning should also be tackled as an opportunity to test new urban models for education. This perhaps implies the idea of rethinking school as a community facility as suggested by Peter March(3).
Now that schools are literally out-side of their original environment, and de-schooling(4) a global standard of education, how to envision learning spaces beyond the walls of school itself. Not only should we address this questions, but rather take it as an opportunity to reimagine safer, healthier, comfortable and culturally relevant space to learn.
— “The whole message of this chapter has been that teaching and learning can happen in any kind of environment”(5)
According to this previous assumption, and together with the idea of learning from the surroundings we came up with the idea of an extra tool: an knowledge map that could be developed in that context so to provide a broader vision and image of what this new places for learning could offer to the community.
Based on a mutual aid model, this digital knowledge map directly refers to the ideas developed by architect and anthropologist Sename Koffi, and its alternative visions of the African smart city. A digital tool that could, thanks to computational power, operate peer to peer across communities resource sharing, as a tribute to traditional African villageois social structures. Creating new learning spaces therefore consists in making available urban resources visible first.
[sketch1= school is out, reinventing remote learning spaces description/Digital knowledge map: mutual aid model/-Open access map 1-Resources across communities — instead of inventing new resources 2-Highlight ones that already exists (wifi hotspots, safe spaces to work 3-Include in physical kits that would be sent to people (i.e. chemistry kits) 4-repurposing spaces for the community ]
A remaining aspect of this first world-building exploration rests on the actual reinvention of primary remote-learning spaces. Interior spaces, available to each are indeed varying quite a lot from a family to another and create important social divisions. Prototyping a digitally fabricated DIY remote learning toolkit could constitue a necessary step further that could be provided together with the map.
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2-Revealing World-Making Mechanisms Through Radical Technologies
In this second section, we investigate how the use of radical technologies, together with fiction could empower black communities. In the first place, as a way to make(6) space for alternative stories. And secondly, to empower the community it targets, by showing the very process hidden behind those radical vision. As a way to illustrate these ideas, this section is based on two potential AR applications developed at the Imaginarium, aiming at discussing data policies on one hand and designing future cities on the other hand.
Whether conveying invented or reality-based scenarios, the idea of using augmented reality aims at arousing the attention, questioning and finally stimulate desire for action on imminent possible futures.
In the first place, we imagined an AR interactive game that would question planetary interconnections and data movement in real time. A post-humanist aesthetic would then invite the user to move out of their own identity to see the geographical routes its actions generate from various web generated requests. A global performance that would make them realise how their data is potentially being used against their communities and will provide them the opportunity someday to directly take action in the elaboration of fair intercommunal networks.
[sketch2= revealing world making mechanisms though radical technologies ]
Central issues in the making of a future common world can be addressed through the elaboration of cities.
In that sense, the use of augmented reality seemed to be once again coherent for us to question black future scenarios. What about this time, further reflect on the possibility for these visualisations to be directly reachable and built almost instantaneously?
If we take, for example the exploration of future scenarios of food in the city. The possibility of decentralisation and distributed design could for instance, be more fully explored within such a scenario.
After viewing the speculative scenarios elaborated as AR filters, the user would be referred through this projection to existing resource spaces in the city and thus give the possibility to all a communities to act and rethink in terms of production and building entanglements. (i.e. DIY growkits)
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3. You’re not alone! Gather, debate, share ideas, train to solve radical futures…act as a Great Pirate !
As a critique to over-specialisation that followed the industrial revolution, Buckminster Fuller explained back in his 1969 Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth why GP (great pirates) used to rule the world in pre-colonial times. In his view, they did so mostly because of their comprehensive command and complex understanding of a whole set of different disciplines. Evolving in a multidisciplinary cohort of imagineers perhaps made me feel like one of them.
In my perennial view, this is again precisely how radical black futures should be addressed. Surrounding yourself with a community of people from different backgrounds, because it seems to be one of the most healing and efficient way of envisioning healthy futures for our communities.
On a personal level moreover, being part of the 2020 Imagineer cohort, made me realise that I didn’t have to make it all by myself which was a great relief. Finding out that people like you are also willing to move forward in the same direction. This is in other words, one of the best things that could happen to you and our common futures.
Find a place where you can be deeply listened and where you won’t feel out of place, become a GP and don’t stop training your imagination.
Futures will be bright and colourful !
Here we come.
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1_Designing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy for Remote Learning Amidst Poverty
2_ Black Gooey Universe by American Artist
3_Places for learning, Peter March//Chapter 7/p.92
4_ ‘De-schooling’ : schools without walls in the 60s (using underused public facility as learning spaces)
5_Places for learning, Peter March//Chapter 7/p.92
6_’Our stories about the future are saturated with the near term future where issues of racial identity are often pushed aside in favor of an expanded and transcended identity beyond the human body. Matt Damon in 2154 embodied that fictional Christ-like cyborg who redeems our fate. Even in this transcendence, racial identity still gets read as a white crusader.’ in http://culturedigitally.org/2014/01/playing-a-minority-forecaster-in-search-of-afrofuturism-where-am-i-in-this-future-stewart-brand/
