“Relational Future Visioning for the City of Montreal” brought together a diverse group of scholars, artists and activists to explore utopian visions through narrative exercises and “mental time travel.” Using present-day trends as a starting point, participants mentally traveled 40 years into the future, where they gave voice to the realms of possibility that lie beyond the short-term imagination using narrative fiction. From these visions emerged an assortment of patterns, commonalities and colorful outliers that carried over into our final exercise: “backcasting” for the years 2020-2060, where our friends in the future kindly disclosed the history of events and interventions that led to their dreams becoming reality.
Thank you to everyone who participated!
Workshop: Relational Future Visioning for the Future of Montreal
The Office of Rules and Norms (ORN) is an arts-based transdisciplinary collective that engages with regulations, the rule of law and cultural norms. These engagements reveal, comprehend, play with, subvert, and transcend current ways of understanding and acting in relation to regulatory forces in order to make room for more equitable alternatives. In its attempts to query legal and behavioral urban infrastructures, the ORN specifically deploys art and design practice, culture, and methods along three axes:
Art as Subversion | Intervening in grey areas of regulation
Art as Pedagogy | Making public various forces and forms of influence
Art as Decision-Making | Reorienting modes of knowing and deliberating
