A selected group of 12 participants learned in 6 sessions how to develop visionary science fiction and speculative fiction in their personal style, together with the Filipino SF writer Rochita Ruiz and a multidisciplinary group of facilitators—Hodan Warsame, Maarten van Hinte, Roziena Salihu and Müge Yilmaz. The stories written during the workshop in 2020 were published in a special festival-edition book, which you can access by clicking here or via the Feed of Other Futures. The presentation of the publication was streamed live from VondelCS on 18 February 2021. Click here to watch the stream!

As a visual artist, Natasha Papadopoulou translates spoken language and body language into several mediums. Yiannis Loukos is an experimental composer and classical piano player. They collaborate as Miss Saturation, a free improv and storytelling band.

For the event, Natasha Papadopoulou and Yiannis Loukos created the performance "Part Way Back": a pop appropriation of Natasha's research on physicality, energetic practices and nontraditional medicine.

In the second half of the evening, Yiannis Loukos played a dark ambient mix of his compositions, inspired by dancing on Mars. "Rhythm is a dancer, a song sung, before it succeeded into fragments of synchronic movement. It happens naturally in nature, but who keeps the tempo for seasons to change? Symphony is more than a musical form: it is an agreement, a collaboration of echoes and sounds that please the ears of many species."

French-based Colombian filmmaker and artist Laura Huertas Millán screened of two of her short films: the dystopian Aequador (2012) set in the middle of the Colombian Amazon and Journey to a land otherwise known (2011), an essay on the conquest of the Americas, introduced by Laura Huertas Millán herself. Laura Huertas Millán’s work is internationally acclaimed and has been screened in venues such as Centre Pompidou and the Guggenheim Museum (NY).

​The screening is followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker and live music by XISTENCE. XISTENCE is the musical side of Roberto Ronzani's artistic production. The practice of the artist – from Basel but currently living in Amsterdam – is influenced by the interactions between the different mediums he uses: music, drawing, painting and video. Fascinated by such genres as jungle, breakbeat and UK garage, as well as the visual codes that accompany them, he treats these references as data that serves to create atmospheric and experimental sound-spaces.

​Brigitte van der Sande curated CT Curated by Other Futures: A Multispecies Experiment at the Compagnietheater in Amsterdam on May 17 2020

PROGRAMME

Upon entering the building participants were requested to choose a persona: plant, insect, bot, humanoid or human, their point of view for the evening. They were invited to explore the different activities with this character in mind.

NATASHA TONTEY

Pest to Power | Installation & talk

Cockroaches can live without their heads. Humans cannot. Cockroaches can eat anything. Humans cannot. Cockroaches can hold their breath for 40 minutes straight, humans cannot. What can we, humans, learn from cockroaches? What can they learn from us? The two channel video installation Pest to Power is a science-quasi-fictional quest into the behaviour of the cockroach, an exploration of eco-centric futurism. 

The future is cockroach. Natasha Tontey is an artist and graphic designer based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She is interested in exploring the concept of fiction as a method of speculative thinking. Through her artistic practice, she investigates the idea of how fear, horror, and terror could be manifested in order to control the public.

MÜGE YILMAZ 

Collective Umwelt | Talk 

The human, non-human, organic, inorganic, natural, technological, gendered and genderless Collective Umwelt roamed throughout the building. Nature is alive and appears in several shapes and forms. Nature can ‘behave’ in a certain way, or embrace every living being. 

Nature can be a talking, acting subject. And nature can ‘defend’ itself. Collective Umwelt explores these possibilities. Müge Yılmaz is a visual artist, who finds analogies or direct correlations between past, present and future mythologies in a quest of the passage of our living conditions from 'biotopia' to 'technotopia'.

ROCIO BERENGUER

Conversations with bot IAGOTCHI | Installation & talk 

IAGOTCHI is a philosophical robot who is learning to be human. The audience could interact with her by having a meaningful conversation, every talk makes her more and more human. 

In the talk Thomas Pachoud, the controller of this bot, shared more about the evolution of the project. IAGOTCHI is created by Rocio Berenguer and her team for the transmedia dance show, performance and installation titled G5_Interspecies, that opened in Paris in February 2020. 

ARJEN MULDER 

The World According to Plants | Talk 

Mulder is a writer, biologist and media theorist based in Amsterdam. He discussed the highlights of his latest book Vanuit de plant gezien, (The World According to Plants) - which was published in 2019. It is a step-by-step exploration of the major differences between humans and plants and a look at the current state of the world from the viewpoint of a plant. The English translation of the first chapter is being published by 1001 Publishers in 2020.

WYTSKE VERSTEEG 

Being Human | Talk 

Wytske Versteeg is a novelist of Quarantaine and Boy among others and the non-fiction book Dit is geen dakloze about homeless people. Versteeg is researcher at the Urban Futures Studio of the University of Utrecht, working at the intersection of science, art and policy and positive urban futures. 

ZHENG BO 

Pteridophilia | Screening 

Zheng Bo is an artist, writer, and teacher, committed to socially and ecologically engaged art. He imagines the future from the perspectives of marginalised communities and spontaneous plants. In his latest project Pteridiophilia he explores the eco-queer potential of plants and people. It was screened ongoing during the evening. 

JACQUE NJERI 

MaaSci | Exhibition & art sale 

If you missed the first edition of Other Futures you missed out on the first exhibition of Jacque Njeri’s futuristic reimagining of the Masai in outer space. Her art was exposed once more and people had the opportunity to become the owner of one of her fascinating works as well. 

EDO BOUMAN 

Bombay Connection | Live music 

Edo Bouman is Bombay Connection. As a DJ he plays Brazilian funk, Turkish psychedelic music, Syrian rock and Ethiopian jazz. He also is the mastermind behind Bombay Connection Records, a label specialised in Bollywood music. 

NASTARAN RAZAWI KHORASANI 

Performer and actress Nastaran Razawi Khorasani was our host for the evening. After graduating from the Toneelacademie Maastricht she has performed with Ro Theater, Productiehuis Rotterdam and Maas Theater en Dans. With Davy Pieters she has her own performance collective KOBE. 

CONFERENCE OF SPECIES

The evening ended with a Conference of Species, where everyone was invited to join the table of their species to explore alternative futures eliminating the human as the dominant figure.

It was moderated by Arjan Mulder, Wytske Versteegh, Müge Yilmaz, Cissie Fu, Dean of Emily Carr University Art + Design, Vancouver, Canada and Ine Gevers, director Niet Normaal Foundation, director of a.o. Yes Naturally, 2013 and Robot Love, 2018