Emergent Futures CoLab

Emergent Futures CoLab is a laboratory for transdisciplinary experimentation and collaborative future-making. We are a collective of scholars and artists working on activist, speculative and future-oriented projects. This transnational collective emerged in March 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic instigated the cancellation of Urgent-Emergent 2020, York University’s Theatre & Performance Studies graduate conference. As our political, economic and environmental futures become increasingly uncertain, we are concerned with what it means to research, collaborate, intervene, create art and take action in this climate of felt urgency. How can radical uncertainty be channelised into new futures? EFC members seek to address the sense that urgent action must be taken in response to events that are currently emerging and shaping our worlds. Our goal is to bring together individuals and communities who are reimagining, improvising and shaping emergent futures and socialities. We are interested in projects that take different forms, such as a digital app, a game, a community website, an accessible and inclusive technology, a stage performance, a film, a community-led or entrepreneurial initiative, advocacy efforts, new pedagogies, etc. We envision a community of practice that maps out collaborative, future-making practices and methodologies adapted by individuals and communities around the world. With gratitude to our advisors and partners: Centre for Imaginative Ethnography Peripheral Visions Lab School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, York University York Centre for Asian Research Future Anthropologies Network at EASA Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice