A futurecrafting experiment conducted in November 2017. We started from the current conditions and environmental challenges in the region. We asked, “What are the (environmental) critical uncertainties in the American Southwest?” and used the Causal Layered Analysis to probe this question. The result was a backstory of “Shadow Belmont”, a speculative urban centre in Arizona in a parallel present or possible future.
Pero a nosotros no nos dan miedo las ruinas, porque llevamos un mundo nuevo en nuestros corazones. Ese mundo está creciendo en este instante. Buenaventura Durruti
The three critical uncertainties identified by the participants were heat, water and tech industry. The tables below summarise the causes underlying each of the uncertainties, as well as possible alternatives specific to Shadow Belmont.
Current | Alt | |
---|---|---|
Litany | Impact, duration & intensity of heat-waves | Seeking shade & shadows; Daily & yearly rhythms attuned to desert cycles (Saguaro time) |
Causes | Climate change; Lifestyle & cities not adapted to desert conditions | Shade-based architecture and transport; Situated learning; Government is the medium; Monastic entities for rethinking time |
Worldviews | Man has dominion over Earth; Right to property and prosperity | Long, durational desert abiding (qualitative time); Redesign of the body attuned to the event (alignment, emergence) |
Myths | Phoenix; Prometheus; Wild West, Desert is a void (purity of wilderness); Noble Savage | Desert Attunement; American Gods; Evolutionary architecture; Long temporality of nothingness followed by abrupt change, return to nothingness |
Current | Alt | |
---|---|---|
Litany | Distribution, pricing and quality of water | Governance and sharing of a variable water supply as a commons |
Causes | Weak public infrastructure and political inaction; growing population; economic valuation; water rights and food sovereignty | Variable abundance & commons management (stewarding, minding); Feasts & festivals (train social commitment) |
Worldviews | Individual self-reliance and DIY; libertarian ethos, free market | Sociality of a coven/dionisian feast; Social responsibility, commitment and obligation; A spirit/transformational field |
Myths | Easy Rider, Godless (Guns & God); sufficiency and hubris | Carnivàle, Dionisian world, time marked by feasts & silences; blooming, flowing, absorption, ecstasy |
Current | Alt | |
---|---|---|
Litany | Impact of the tech industry | Impact of Antennae-centric tech industry; Smart-grid & solar; Ambient & responsive; Rise of new attunement instruments |
Causes | Economic incentives; Risk tolerance; Job creation; “Innovation Valley of the Sun” | Collective incentives; Government supports trans-species chanelling, Tech-supported complementary currencies; ecological resource management; Non-representational media and occult/alchemical technologies |
Worldviews | Faith in technological progress; American pragmatism; Distrust of educated elites; Protestant work ethic; Importance of tangible, visible and measurable contribution to society; Immortality | Serial monotasking (commitment to the act); Bringing together heterogeneous systems where medium is the catalyst (biomimicry); Attunement to differentials |
Myths | (Cowboy) Missionaries, John Ford films, Pioneers, Atomism of the isolated subject; Idleness is the devil's playground; Existential quests and transcendence in the desert | City & the city, The Laundry Files, The New Renaissance, dissolving, trance, enthusiasm |
… backstory of the shadow belmont world (…)
When we are frightened it can feel like we are trapped under water, under ice. The mythic directive in such a moment is unusual. It says this: go deeper. Attend to the Goddess underneath the unfolding. There’s no restoration without courtship. Don’t smash your knuckles raw on the ice, but dive down further — seemingly the opposite of what everyone on the surface wants you to do. But of course, the diver swims down not just with their terror, but with their stories, their artfulness, their skill. Most importantly, most wonderfully, their love. Ironically, only by diving deeper can the ice melt. Martin Shaw
Headlines from “Saguaro Times”, daily newspaper in “Shadow Belmont”
We no longer have roots, we have aerials. We no longer have origins, we have terminals. McKenzie Wark
Further notes on: resonances | experiments | fieldtrip_2