Hunting for weak signals

Use

Useful to get more concrete ideas about your imagined world or future, and to develop the vision you have of it. A nice way to connect the present to possible futures and to connect the reality of public space to imagined and fabulated worlds.

Protocol

1

Imagine you are not living today but rather in the future or world you (collectively) imagined in one of the previous steps. Also imagine that you are some kind of archeologist and that you are able to travel back in time to a previous era.

2

With this fiction in mind, go out for a walk. During the walk, try to look unsuspicious, keep your eyes wide open, and remind yourself of the archeological task at hand: to hunt for weak signals of change that are predicating this possible future you inhabit, and to document them. This documentation can take the form of notes, stories, pictures, sound recordings etc...

3

What signs or signals can you find on your walk that are somehow, however subtly, foreboding and foreshadowing your World or Future?

4

Once everyone in the group is back from their walks, share your experience and documentation.

Testimonies

With the children from the former mining area around Valenciennes (F) we walked around the school and looked for signs of possible new relationships with animals. At the back of the yard: the neighbours' gardens. In one garden: black sheep. The children refer to them as teachers of the future. The animals would teach at school and give advice.

Anna Cz.

Credits

Rasa A. proposed this game during the Masterclass for the students of KASK in november 2019.

Anna Cz. and Diederik P. attempted to transcribe the recipe.