Future Matter

Future Matter #5 - Svitlana Matviyenko

Written by narrated by Svitlana Matviyenko

"This project began this diary two months ago when our everyday life started showing the signs of persistent militarization in response to the Russian troops building up near the Ukrainian border. Registering the nuances of this transformation seemed important. Like many, I thought the tension would dissolve, but this is a war diary now." - Svitlana Matviyenko

Future Matter #4 - Riar Rizaldi

Written by Riar Rizaldi

Holonomy is a science/ethno-fiction in the form of found-audio play. It tells a personal reflection of Indonesian astrobiologist & xenoanthropologist Serambi Fati in her diplomatic mission to visit a superhabitable planet called Bumi 5.0. On her interstellar voyage, she transmits her thought on her speculation of tropical futurism in Bumi. At the same time, she explores her theory of 'commoning process' which is developed based on the evolution of mutual assistance, moral order and cosmological system of the tropical region—especially Indonesian archipelago—and echoes it to her prediction of the Buminites society. Fati contemplates the past as much as she thinks about the future.

Riar Rizaldi works as an artist, filmmaker and amateur researcher. Born in Indonesia and currently based in Hong Kong. His main focus is on the relationship between capital and technology, extractivism, and theoretical fiction. His works have been shown at Locarno Film Festival, BFI Southbank London, International Film Festival Rotterdam, NTT InterCommunication Center Tokyo, Centre Pompidou Paris, Times Museum Guangzhou, and National Gallery of Indonesia amongst others.

Transcript of the audio find here

"Betraying Utopia"

Narrated by Jassem Hindi

Sound and Mixing by Jassem Hindi

Cover Design by Victor Timofeev

A utopia is a suspended locale, a space without time, extracted out of the mud of life. This canonical, western acceptance, is a suspicious object of desire - dis-incarnated; bodies are designed, pacified, or idealized. It is an island where time is suspended, and thus transformation is excluded. What happens when we re-introduce time, when we betray Utopia’s intent?

To unlearn what “Utopia” could be/become, Jassem Hindi is using historical, conceptual and speculative strategies. This audio narrative consists of two parts, it is a soft introduction to wide research on “Betraying” utopia, and on “Slimy” utopia. This means using utopia as a political practice that is not about projection (waiting patiently for the future) in a linear, progressive timeline (what is possible according to what we know) - our strategy is to fragment utopia into smaller pieces and disseminate those fragments in our present practices. In art, Utopia is not ‘yet to come', it is a now: a poem written in times of war is direct access to utopia, a pharmakon in times of hardship - that is the effectiveness of utopia, its potential for immanence, for betraying the dis-incarnated, idealist version.

Texts by Reza Negarestani, Benedict Singleton, Sun Ra, CA Conrad, Etel Adnan and others.

Merci Andrea Novac, Merci Lesia Vasylchenko, Merci Sina Seifee, Go raibh maith agat Ruairi Donovan.

This work is dedicated to the loving memory of Alina Popa.

Jassem Hindi is a Djeddah-born performer and sound artist based in Norway. He is an independent philosophy researcher, studying the double-bind of haunting and hospitality. His recent artworks have been focused on the physical relation between performance and death poetry, as a space for a collective political and environmental practice.

Future Matter #2

"The Bodily Life"

Written and Narrated by Ane Graff

The text "The Bodily Life" is about a body dealing with autoimmunity and reflecting upon issues of identity, permeability and materiality. Discussing what a body is and how it is positioned in the world, the text draws from an era of privilege, where the self was perceived not only as unique and self-contained but uncontaminated. This view is challenged along with the idea of "Horror autotoxicus", the idea that the body cannot attack itself. Autoimmune diseases refer to a collection of chronic diseases wherein normal tissues are misidentified by the immune system as "foreign" and the body starts "attacking itself". Thus the dangers of the world exist both "without" and "within".

Ane Graff is an artist and researcher based in Oslo, Norway. Graff’s practice is informed by feminist new materialism – a re-thinking of our material reality, in which a process-oriented approach to matter plays an integral part. Her work traces lines between Western intellectual history and how ideas of human exceptionalism and dualism relate to the ecological disasters we face today.  Recent exhibitions include the 58th Venice Biennale, Italy; KIASMA, Finland, the Rhizome/ New Museum/ Stavanger Kunsthall collaboration 7x7; and Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, United Kingdom.

https://www.futurematter.institute

Future Matter #1  

"ECHO" 

Written by Callum Copley

Narrated by Daan Couzijn 

Sound and Mixing by Remco Hazewinkel 

Graphic design by Marick Roy

Echo is a work of speculative fiction set in present-day Amsterdam. Through a series of recurring encounters and chance happenings, it tells a story that at its core is a problematization of the notion of individuality and subjectivity. Inspired by Denise Ferreira da Silva’s thinking in ‘On Difference Without Separability’, Echo attempts to pick up some of the questions raised—rhetorical or otherwise—regarding the conceptual (and literal) possibilities held in discoveries around Quantum Physics. Rather than a speculative future—Echo is a provocation. It is an attempt to use non-classical physics to question the materiality of consciousness and to pose a radical reimagining of agency, relationality, empathy and interdependency. It is an attempt to think through what it means to be connected to someone; what sort of responsibilities does this entail? And how can pushing these dynamics to their extremes reveal what it might mean for new types of being with one and other?

Callum Copley is a researcher and writer based between Amsterdam and the UK, examining the political and cultural entanglements of emerging technologies. Through games, film, audio and text, his work explores fiction as a method for both proposing alternative futures as well as enacting radical change in the present. He teaches at the Critical Inquiry Lab (MA) at Design Academy Eindhoven, and the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, where he also graduated from the Critical Studies masters program in 2018. He is co-founder of ‘Schemas of Uncertainty’ an ongoing research initiative exploring the role of prediction in a contemporary digitized society. He is editor of ‘Reworlding: Ramallah, Short Science Fiction Stories from Palestine’ (Onomatopee, 2019), author of the novella ‘φιλία’ (2018) and of the collection of short stories ‘Twitchers, Mucklarks and Gravediggers’ (2017).

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