Deconstructing Tech Futures: A Workshop on Critical Imagination

Part of Disruption Network Lab’s conference Hacking Alienation. 

With allapopp (Digital Media and Performance Artist), Dinara Rasuleva (Writer, Poet_ess).

Who gets to tell the story of the future, when the present is falling apart and the past is a lie? Whose stories haven’t been told and what technological ways unimagined, labelled wild and rendered invisible, known to few other languages, cultures and territories, but to themselves? What role do technologies play in reproducing power disbalances and how could such technologies be used as means of political participation?

According to Sarah Wachter, 96% of the world does not live in the United States, but a majority of our digital tools and platforms are based on US customs, political culture, and laws”. Ruha Benjamin criticises the Silicon Valley for focus on the utopian vision because they evoke it to sell gadgets, and the Hollywood’s dystopian version because it helps sell tickets.

In the processes of colonization, imperial oppression, and forced erasure, entire indigenous cultures die out, languages get forgotten, literatures disappear. Unique stories remain untold and unheard, experiences remain unshared. Many indigenous people are forced to assimilate, losing their identities and having to study and work in the dominant languages. This leads to a future created by dominant voices, where we no longer exist. Do our cultures need to adapt to survive in the future? Is it necessary and possible to change and develop them according to values that contradict patriarchal traditions and cultural norms? How can we reappropriate religions and traditions and create a new future without erasing them? In this conversational and imaginative workshop, we will address the need to deconstruct and shift the rather homogeneous dominant narratives of technological futures, and focus on exploring potentials and ways of fostering new world visions, as acts of self-empowerment and possibilities for political participation and change, which center our experiences and imaginations, rooted in migrant cultures, by and for those who have so far been excluded from the matrix of technological modernity.

Eligibility criteria: 

• FLINTA* (Femme, Lesbians, Intersex, Non-binary, Trans, Agender and other*) only.

• An experience of speaking on a non-native language as main, due to either colonization, imperial oppression, repressions and forced erasure of the cultures.

• Migrantisized experience and experience of mixed/unclear identity due to being forced to assimilate to a dominant culture.

• No technical or writing skills required.

• No laptop required.

What to bring: 

• An object that connects you to your culture.

• Books on your native language.

• Photos or pictures that reflect and remind you of your traditions.