Speculative Reportages, part of Kultur Labor Zürich's Arts for Future project, are fact-based fictions that look at climate policy from the perspective of the year 2050, beyond combustion engine bans and vegan menus. They aim to propose new possibilities for action in the present through future perspectives and to remain capable of acting in the face of the climate crisis.
What does a 1.5℃ rise in the global annual temperature mean for my everyday life? Will there soon be state-imposed siestas because trade unions have successfully fought against employees having to work at 40℃? What would shopping streets in city centers look like if fast fashion no longer existed?
Even if all these thoughts are speculation and there are no easy answers, one thing is certain: changes are needed when it comes to how people, societies, and nations interact with the environment. But at the moment, we still lack a holistic understanding of what our world could look like in just ten years.
What we need are neither unrealistic utopias nor paralyzing dystopias. We need something in between: Narratives that make science accessible and forecasts tangible. We need ideas about what a climate-neutral future could look like to work productively towards it. We need speculative reports that generate understanding, reflect on our actions, and encourage us to initiate collective change.
How can we successfully take the step into the future?
We use immersion-driven techniques to bridge the gap between ideas of the future and projections of the present in the year 2050. A preliminary research process is used to analyze the environment and identify problem areas and fundamental questions that serve to prepare the workshop. The results were deepened in a two-day intensive workshop. The team, consisting of Jeannie Schneider, Samuel Eberenz, Manuel Stark, Anna Dreussi, Jamal Mahmoud, and Gina Müller, created a theoretical narrative framework with the help of which they were able to develop three fact-based fictional stories. In doing so, they followed a formulated framework.
Objective
To develop a realistic, action-oriented future scenario for the year 2050
Impact analysis
Identification and discussion of the key factors that will influence everyday life in Zurich by 2050
Collection of relevant topics and trends, clustering and weighting in preparation for the projections
Immersion through nature journaling and reflection
Sensitization to environmental influences by recording observations and feelings
Reflecting on the current environment and projecting these experiences onto the year 2050
Scenario development
Application of the morphological box for the structured development of consistent images of the future
Development of different perspectives through creative writing and role plays
Interpretation and recommendations for action
Analysis of the scenarios and identification of driving forces
Deriving recommendations for action and preparing the basis for speculative reports and texts
New perspectives alongside tech dystopia and eco-utopia
Our ideas about futures are often biased by the perspective from which we view the present - due to personal bias, ignorance, or simply a lack of expertise. This is where the scenario technique comes into play: it aims to remove the blinkers of myopia of the present to create holistic and innovative scenarios in a multidisciplinary team.
Scenarios consist of a description of a potential future situation and the path that leads to these futures. They are images of futures extrapolated from data and made consistent with imagination, combining the worlds of empiricism and creativity. In this respect, they are extremely well suited to depicting the complex and fluid development of our reality. The team used the CH2018 Mittelland climate scenarios as the factual projection basis for the scenarios.
The Speculative Reportages resulting from the project break with the promise of unlimited linear growth and thus create a perspective for action. As part of the Fintopia exhibition, the three reportages were made accessible to society as a whole in order to bring the future into everyday life, just like the stories created.
Where does our gaze rest now? The resulting texts already provide us with a consistent narrative framework and various personas that we as readers can immerse ourselves in. As a vehicle for new possibilities, they serve to ask us in which direction we want to steer. The impact will come. The 1.5-degree limit is only theoretically achievable. But what can each of us do to prepare for it?
