Talking Uncertainty

How might participating in ethno-science fiction films create a space for activism, healing and speculating futures? In ethno-science fiction, uncertainty is put in dialogue with imagination. It is a liberatory space where you can projectively improvise and play out different versions of your everyday life. Ethno-science fiction brings personal imagination in dialogue with the predictions of scientists. It involves speculating different possible scenarios that help build future strategies. By creating alternative fictional worlds, science fiction can provide a critical distance between ourselves and the mundane world through the concept of “cognitive estrangement” (Friedman). This can be a kind of activism, in terms of an action towards positive change and healing. However, in this kind of filmmaking, a certain level of trust and willingness to play must exist between the collaborators, to ensure that the film does not end up being a totalitarian act by the filmmaker. Read all the insights here - https://www.urgentemergent.org/talking-uncertainty/ethno-science-fiction --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/talkinguncertainty/message

How does ethno-science fiction challenge our notion of temporality? Ethno-science fiction is a co-creative genre of ethnographic film where interlocutors express their imagined future through improvisation, applied theatre and other artistic practices. This genre disrupts the ethnocentric, linear progression of time. It shows that our understanding of the future reveals the contradictions of the present rather than a grasp of the past. We always tend to project ourselves into the future. However, talking back and forth between the present and the future self within ethno science fiction provides us with a certain agency where we are not a subject of time. This genre also allows us to try out different future scenarios, navigating the possible and impossible, especially as we face the rising threats of climate change. Read all the insights here - https://www.urgentemergent.org/talking-uncertainty/ethno-science-fiction --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/talkinguncertainty/message

How might ethno-science fiction reinforce and replicate dominant imaginaries and media ecologies? As seen in Sjoberg’s film “Call Me Back,” our collaborations often project scenarios that seem to replicate popular culture narratives of desire for fame, recognition, and commercial success. Although ethno-science fiction can provide a generative, healing space for speculating futures, it tends to act as a “sponge;” it absorbs and reflects all kinds of media and imaginary ecologies that we consume on a daily basis, such as telenovelas, surrealist films, realist films, documentaries, etc. Therefore, projective improvisations sometimes fail to produce alternative forms of imagination. By creating such future-oriented films, we risk releasing stories that reinforce narratives produced by the larger media ecology. We must be cognizant of the way that narratives, dominant or otherwise, emerge through our imaginative and performative work with our interlocutors. Read all the insights here - https://www.urgentemergent.org/talking-uncertainty/ethno-science-fiction --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/talkinguncertainty/message

How can we complicate the notion of collaboration and more transparently discuss the ways in which we work alongside our communities? Collaboration has become a catch-all, utopian term that is used uncritically to describe our relationships with our interlocutors. Making ethnographic films is sometimes considered an intrusion by communities, and the power differential between filmmaker and interlocutor usually means that it takes time to develop a close relationship. As such, we should perhaps speak of negotiation instead of collaboration. While working with our interlocutors, we must reveal our often clashing narratives and make these processes transparent. It is these frictions that are usually the most generative. Read all the insights here - https://www.urgentemergent.org/talking-uncertainty/ethno-science-fiction --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/talkinguncertainty/message

In this special event, Dr. Johannes Sjöberg will be premiering his new ethno science fiction film ‘Call Me Back’ (2020), followed by a talk on exploring uncertain environmental futures through creative and collaborative practice. We will explore how projective improvisation in ethnographic film could contribute to the way we relate to scientific predictions of the future. Read the talk insights here - https://www.urgentemergent.org/talking-uncertainty/ethno-science-fiction --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/talkinguncertainty/message