LENA DOBROWOLSKA & TEO ORMOND-SKEAPING - FUTURE NEWS

Working with a collaborative scenarios thinking methodology Lena Dobrwolska & Teo Ormond-Skeaping have created speculative magazine covers, newspaper front pages, and documents that show future scenarios in a climate-changed world.

By asking “what if” questions — “What if the geo-engineers blocked out the sun?” — Lena Dobrwolska & Teo Ormond-Skeaping have reworked covers and front pages from iconic publications with appropriated imagery to tell speculative future news stories that encourage us to stretch our imagination and consider alternative memories of the future. In doing so Lena Dobrwolska & Teo Ormond-Skeaping intend to reveal how often simplified media narratives frame our understanding of the world and how these narratives give rise to certain types of future scenarios.

Humanity is standing at a fork in the road. One direction leads towards EcoModernist-type future scenarios — filled with technocratic fixes that risk locking us into geo-engineering, and the moral hazard of assuming negative carbon emissions will be possible.* The other direction leads towards de-growth and indigenous-cosmology-based futures that, “respect the limits of the Earth and the rights of other species and nature, while pursuing the core values of social justice and equity.”** It is more important than ever before to become aware of how our political, media, and scientific narratives shape the way that we perceive possible future scenarios. We must make choices now to assure that techno-deterministic scenario pathways do not colonize our vision of the future and further suppress the voices of marginalized indigenous and minority communities.

*Evans, Simon (2018) , Carbon Brief, In-depth: Is Shell’s new climate scenario as ‘radical’ as it says?
**Ray, G, (2015), Resisting Extinction: Standing Rock, Eco-Genocide, and Survival

BIO

Lena Dobrowolska & Teo Ormond-Skeaping are a research-based artist collaboration working with photography, film, virtual reality, and installation. Since 2012 they have been working on extensive, interdisciplinary projects relating to political ecology, climate change, climate justice, Loss and Damage, Slow Violence, and the Capitalocene.

LENA DOBROWOLSKA & TEO ORMOND-SKEAPING - FUTURE NEWS

Working with a collaborative scenarios thinking methodology Lena Dobrwolska & Teo Ormond-Skeaping have created speculative magazine covers, newspaper front pages, and documents that show future scenarios in a climate-changed world.

By asking “what if” questions — “What if the geo-engineers blocked out the sun?” — Lena Dobrwolska & Teo Ormond-Skeaping have reworked covers and front pages from iconic publications with appropriated imagery to tell speculative future news stories that encourage us to stretch our imagination and consider alternative memories of the future. In doing so Lena Dobrwolska & Teo Ormond-Skeaping intend to reveal how often simplified media narratives frame our understanding of the world and how these narratives give rise to certain types of future scenarios.

Humanity is standing at a fork in the road. One direction leads towards EcoModernist-type future scenarios — filled with technocratic fixes that risk locking us into geo-engineering, and the moral hazard of assuming negative carbon emissions will be possible.* The other direction leads towards de-growth and indigenous-cosmology-based futures that, “respect the limits of the Earth and the rights of other species and nature, while pursuing the core values of social justice and equity.”** It is more important than ever before to become aware of how our political, media, and scientific narratives shape the way that we perceive possible future scenarios. We must make choices now to assure that techno-deterministic scenario pathways do not colonize our vision of the future and further suppress the voices of marginalized indigenous and minority communities.

*Evans, Simon (2018) , Carbon Brief, In-depth: Is Shell’s new climate scenario as ‘radical’ as it says?
**Ray, G, (2015), Resisting Extinction: Standing Rock, Eco-Genocide, and Survival