Imaginative Futures

We live in troubled and complex times, more than ever requiring imaginative thinking about the future. However, many researchers, artists and cultural critics point out the difficulties with the very notion of future, not to mention the formulating of credible and valid visions. In a Western context it has for example been deemed difficult, by many even impossible, to imagine an alternative to capitalism.

Similarly, in relation to climate change, it is argued that we face a general “crisis of the imagination”.

The purpose of this project is to make an intervention into the ongoing academic discussions on the role of imagination and imagining practices in shaping and creating our futures. With the help of the concept of “imaginative futures” I explore the possibilities of creating visions of a future society that contain ideas and elements that one would wish to move towards, although without regarding the visions as necessary, or even possible, to fulfill.

The focus is thus not on what these visions may be, but on the facilitating of the possibilities for them to unfold. This is a question that furthermore concerns the role of the academic and the need for academic work to also approach the imaginative, its practices and technologies, in order to catch the processes. The topics of imagination, future, time, materiality, art, and artificial intelligence are central for the analysis.