Resources
Compatriot Projects
Iyapo Repository is part of a community of practice that utilizes speculation and design to imagine alternate futures. Below are some of our compatriots.
The Thing From The Future
The Thing From The Future is a game by Situation Lab. The object of the game is to come up with the most entertaining and thought-provoking descriptions of hypothetical objects from different near-, medium-, and long-term futures. Each round, players collectively generate a creative prompt by playing a card game. This prompt outlines the kind of future that the thing-to-be-imagined comes from, specifies what part of society or culture it belongs to, describes the type of object that it is, and suggests an emotional reaction that it might spark in an observer from the present. Players must then each write a short description of an object that fits the constraints of the prompt. These descriptions are then read aloud (without attribution), and players vote on which description they find the most interesting, provocative, or funny. The winner of each round keeps the cards put into play for that round, and whoever has the most cards when the game ends is declared the overall winner.
Black Quantum Futurism
Black Quantum Futurism (BQF) is a new approach to living and experiencing reality by way of the manipulation of space-time in order to see into possible futures, and/or collapse space-time into a desired future in order to bring about that future’s reality. This vision and practice derives its facets, tenets, and qualities from quantum physics and Black/African cultural traditions of consciousness, time, and space. Under a BQF intersectional time orientation, the past and future are not cut off from the present - both dimensions have influence over the whole of our lives, who we are and who we become at any particular point in space-time. Through various writing, music, film, visual art, and creative research projects, BQF Collective also explores personal, cultural, familial, and communal cycles of experience, and solutions for transforming negative cycles into positive ones using artistic and wholistic methods of healing. Our work focuses on recovery, collection, and preservation of communal memories, histories, and stories.
Speculative Design
Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want).
The Extrapolation Factory
The Extrapolation Factory is a design-based research studio for participatory futures studies, founded by Chris Woebken and Elliott P. Montgomery. The studio develops experimental methods for collaboratively prototyping, experiencing and impacting future scenarios. Central to these methods is the creation of hypothetical future props and their deployment in familiar contexts such as 99¢ stores, science museums, vending machines and city sidewalks. With this work, the studio is exploring new territories for democratized futures by rapidly imagining, prototyping, deploying and evaluating visions of possible futures on an extended time scale.
Selected Resources
Art Hack Practice: Critical Intersections of Art, Innovation and the Maker Movement. United States, Taylor & Francis, 2019.
Scaled for Success: The Internationalisation of the Mermaid. United States, Indiana University Press, 2018.
Butler, Octavia E.. Lilith's Brood: The Complete Xenogenesis Trilogy. United States, Open Road Media, 2012.
Dunne, Anthony, and Raby, Fiona. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. United Kingdom, MIT Press, 2013.
Montgomery, Elliott P., and Woebken, Chris. Extrapolation Factory Operator's Manual. Poland, Extrapolationfactory.com, 2016.
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York, Oxford University Press, 1985.
Illich, Ivan D. Tools for Conviviality. London, Marion Boyars, 1985.
Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1997.
Singh, Julietta, and Punctum Books. No Archive Will Restore You. Santa Barbara, Ca, 3Ecologies Books/Immediations, An Imprint Of Punctum Books, 2018.
Retallack, Joan. The Poethical Wager. Berkeley, University Of California Press, 2003.
Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1997.
TRamírez-D’Oleo, Dixa. This Will Not Be Generative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Print. Elements in Feminism and Contemporary Critical Theory.
Syms, Martine. “The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto.” Rhizome, 17 Dec. 2013, rhizome.org/editorial/2013/dec/17/mundane-afrofuturist-manifesto/.
Mulgan, Geoff. The Imaginary Crisis. Apr. 2020, www.are.na/block/23846690.
Haeckel, Jena J. EVERYTHING PASSES except the PAST DECOLONIZING ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUMS, FILM ARCHIVES, and PUBLIC SPACE. Sternberg Press, 2021.
Shorin, Toby. “Life after Lifestyle.” Subpixel.space, 14 Sept. 2022, subpixel.space/entries/life-after-lifestyle/.
Hickey, Amber, et al. A Guidebook of Alternative Nows. Los Angeles, Journal Of Aesthetics & Protest Press, 2012.
Loveless, Natalie. How to Make Art at the End of the World. Duke University Press, 2019.
Agapis, Eleni. “TOOLKIT.” Toolkit.press, toolkit.press/.
Press, Toolkit. Commune Diverge Shift Connect: A Press Press Chronicle. Press Press, Mar. 2019.