Futurology → Publication → 100 Tirer des Questions au Sort en.md

Random questions

Space: You can be at the table and take notes while answering the questions, or you can sit on the floor and do it orally.
Roles: Act alone or in groups. One person has prepared the questions or the group is instructed to write down questions on small pieces of paper, folds them up and throws them into a jar before answersing them.
Preparation: Write down all the questions that come to mind. You can also create all sorts of jars for particular aspects of the worlds, e.g. work jar, fashion jar, property jar, education jar, party jar, food jar.
Duration: Half an hour is good.

Scenario building

Use

Once your worlds are created, they need to be developed and deepened. Here is a simple tool to help you do that.

Protocol

Dip your hand into the jar, unfold the paper and read the question aloud. Answer on your own or in groups, possibly discussing and helping each other or arguing. Don't forget to take notes. This will help.

Variant. Other question-based games

Bring the group together. Arrange the group in two circles: an inner circle and an outer circle facing each other. Suggest topics of conversation to explore the worlds. Participants have 30 seconds to talk about the topic or three minutes, as you wish. You are the master of time. Say for example: How are we celebrating in Moutabor? When you want to change the subject, raise your arms to initiate the wave of silence. You change conversation partners by taking a step to the left or right and a new topic is started.

Here are some sample questions

What clothes do we wear in this world? What do we eat? What do we grow? What do sociologists of labour do in your world? Who cooks in your world? Is there such a thing as home food delivery? Who does the cleaning? Who cleans houses, businesses? Who goes on holiday? What does doing nothing mean in your world? Where is benevolence and generosity in your world? What are foundations for? Do we have employment contracts? Does voluntary work exist? What are the uses of cinema and theatre? Of books? How are publishers paid? Booksellers? Is time still linear? What are computers for in your world? Where are the seniors? What do they do? How are footballers regarded? Do people travel in your world? What about gender in this world? Has a new world monetary system been developed? Do people still go swimming? Elsewhere? Do people play sports? Which one? When do we do it? What types of housing do people live in? Are work and living spaces separate? Who is the boss? What kind of governance? How do children and adults live together?

Testimonial

This series of questions above were asked during a thematic evening about the future of work at the Vecteur in Charleroi, which brought together a labour sociologist, a former Deliveroo delivery man and two artists for an evening of face-to-face exchanges. It is interesting to note that the game was proposed in a "demonstrative" mode rather than as an in-depth exercise in order to present prospective tools to the public rather quickly. I drew the two axes Freedom VS Self-exploitation and Work VS Idleness on a board and quickly described the 4 potential worlds, before asking the questions aloud to the audience, leaving silences so that everyone could try to imagine: the place of voluntary work in Free-Egome, a world where everyone practices self-exploitation but where idleness has become the number one value, the place of cinema and arts in Asperbore, a world where work is at the center of everything but where each person is free of all. This game quickly allows to be invaded by images and thus to open new perspectives of discussion where exchanges can sometimes come up against a stuck feeling of tyranny of reality as Mona Chollet would say.

Mathilde M.

Credits

Rasa A. proposed this activity at the Works who master class in Ghent in 2020. Mathilde M. also likes to do it with Club Travail.

↑

1

Inventer et imaginer de nouveaux mondes

2