Workshop “Futur imaginations” – Madrid 2023

On Thursday, September 7, 2023 we held a workshop on Future Imaginations at Espacios Comunes with the collaboration of the artist Lorena Bernardini. A workshop whose objective is to reflect collectively on the future imaginations that we are configured against those we would like to see, develop, be part of, although they are imperfect will be ours and therefore it will be in our hand to modify them as many times as we want, until they meet the collective welfare.

This workshop is part of a series that I call “Thinking technology” a space that poses challenges, spaces for experimentation, laboratories of thought.

On this occasion, the challenge consisted of thinking about what is the future imagination related to the city we have and if it coincides with what the city we would like to live in would be like.

We divided the workshop into two parts, the first one individually, where we tried to associate the senses to the future imagination we have, because the objective of these workshops is to reestablish the link between reason and the senses, and to see both as part of a whole.
When this future imagination we have was shared, gray colors, smooth surfaces, metallic, glass, plastics, sweet, synthetic or garbage smells, permanent noise, buzzing, electronic sounds, agglomerations, lack of space, sticky, soft, rough textures appeared.

However, during the second part, what we asked was not to be “realistic”, to force us to think of any possible future in which we would like to live … we gave no clues, nor was it oriented, so the participants were faced with a “emptyness”, they only had their own references and those of the people in the group. Through exchange and collaboration, two different cities emerged (although I saw them as complementary) and each had elements of each participant.

It is significant that in both groups, the cities they imagined gave priority to common spaces, nature, gardens, and yet minimized the presence of transportation, or tall buildings.

There was no time to analyze in detail the result of the imagined cities, nor how it would be feasible to implement them, so questions such as: what model of social and economic organization would be behind each one?

This reflection is pending for the next workshop.

To finish we made a round of evaluation of the workshop, I was happy to see that some of the objectives I had were fulfilled :), and also everyone agreed that it was a pity that there was not enough time to reflect on the work done.

Infinite thanks to Lorena for accompanying me in these spaces of experimentation, putting her knowledge and her artistic knowledge at the disposal of everyone. A thousand thanks to Marcos for making available the premises of Espacios Comunes. And thanks above all to the participants for coming and being willing to participate in this adventure of imaginary futures.

See you soon!

And we share also a short video done during the workshop 🙂