In this presentation, we will clarify why the current paradigm shift and liminal stage call for the design of post-humanist future worlds, as open bigger pictures, in which future scenarios, trends, transitions, or strategies can unfold.

As we will show, the three large digital, environmental, and demographic transitions are in the process of disrupting western anthropological and epistemological foundations, and require new visions of the world and future cosmologies – the term is used here in its anthropological sense, i.e., as ways of ordering the world and giving meaning to existence.

The Anthropocene asks to reinvent the human condition on Earth, ranging from daily life-styles to our relation and thinking of nature, from urban ecosystems to the global economy, from legal frames to holistic global perspectives and including our relation to outer space, and the future horizon. Simultaneously, the digital transition is also impacting the entire society from most intimate aspect of life such as dating, to the geopolitical order, from work and business to education and health… The technological acceleration even generates new alien realities and ontologies such as AIs, xeno-bots, distributed autonomous organizations and metaverses becoming protagonists, stakeholders, and life-milieus to make a society and worlds with…

These extended transitional processes include revisiting all our rationalities, in search for new forms of post-colonial equities, imaginaries, and universalisms, while the global demography is also in deep transformation.
From that ecosystemic perspective, we will introduce a fluid and multiscalar matrix to design future worlds, resulting from an iterative methodological research process (initiated in 2017) and combining elements from foresight, futures design, world-building, Multi-Level Perspective, transition design and art.

RBW

Complex systems are predictable – until they are not! At a time of pan- and perma-crises… war-ridden continents, pandemic, climate change… that do not stand alone, but are intertwined and in complex relation with each other, feeding upon the disruption they engender individually and jointly, the fateful tipping point may indeed seem nigh. Whether the tipping point is before or behind us, we are certainly in a liminal state – a state of flux, in between worlds.

Liminality is a state of emergence and becoming. A state of possibilities and of transformations, as well as a state of radical uncertainty and not knowing. A state in which how we respond to the problem – as individuals, organisations, even society – may in fact be part of the problem! A state in which the tried and true may transform into the tired and treacherous. A state that requires new questions, new perspectives, new futures to explore.

The conference has two full days of presentations, networking and workshops at the École des Ponts Business School in Paris on the 25-27^th October, and pre-conference side-events and activities on the 23-24^th October. To celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of the Federation, we are organising activities that reflect the past 50 years, and discuss the next 50 years.

We choose liminality as an organising concept for the conference to reflect on the liminalities we are experiencing today.  As futurists, we are dealing with change, transformation and uncertainty, and as transitioning into new stages, we are often confronted with liminal spaces that exists between pasts and futures. We have a wide range of tools to explore future opportunities and prepare the present to transform into preferable futures.  Our community of futurists is committed to practice futures studies and foresight in all areas of life, and always stay inclusive and open to all members of society. Our members are practicing futures studies and foresight in all levels of industry, government, NGOs, and also, make sure that education of all levels is also includes futures and futures thinking.

The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars, researchers, and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines to explore the concept of liminality and its implications for our understanding of human experience, identity, and culture. Through a series of presentations, workshops, and discussions, we hope to generate new insights, spark innovative ideas, and build a community of scholars and practitioners who are committed to exploring and practicing futures.

Conference program: wfsf2023paris.org

Session ‘Science-Fiction, Future Worlds and Future Cosmologies’ moderated by Thomas Lombardo, director of the Center for Future Consciousness

“When logic only gets us so far, art provides a creative free zone to explore and begin a mindset transition to future solutions”.

In this new episod of the Foresight Talks, IFTF invites Raphaële Bidault-Waddington, artist and futurist, founder of LIID Future Lab in Paris, in a conversation with Rachel Hatch, IFTF Chief Operating Officer.

During the session, RBW will come back on her hybrid background and artistic research journey, which lead her to become a futurist, and share some concrete projects – including with IFTF and Aalto University in 2012 -, showing how she designs transdisciplinary laboratories and methodologies.

As part of LIID Future Lab’s R&D, she carried from 2008 to 2017 a multi-awarded project on the future Greater Paris Metropolis at Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne University with an ecosystem of partnering schools, which allowed to experiment truly out of the box future research experiences on near and far futures (150 yrs ahead).

Since 2017, LIID’s latest R&D TAC Future Lab addresses the current Anthropocene, AI and post-humanist paradigm shift, which deeply shakes western anthropological and epistemological foundations, and explores new research strategies to co-create meaningful futures.

Recording of the webinar available on Youtube

In recent years, a growing number of researchers from the field of the Arts, are developing, in and beyond academia, innovative approaches to address the future and its critical challenges, such as the environment, post-coloniality or technologies, and have an increased impact on society.

The arts are a universal language. In our education systems and research methodologies, these essential tools and perspectives the arts offer have been underutilized. This group of creative futurists and arts-integrated researchers are working to re-integrate the arts to benefit learning and understanding of the earth and each other. Artists and creatives are known for methods that are speculative, non-reductive, and attend to both humanistic and natural concerns. This session will explore the promise and the power of the arts to address systemic problems.

For this exploratory round-table at the Learning Planet Festival, a2ru is pleased to invite four art-based researchers who are pursuing pioneering research practice, platforms and strategies to contribute to future research and positive change. Together, they will share their experience, and discuss how to better value and amplify that movement.

Participants in this roundtable are actively exploring and practicing creative integration in the public sector, higher education, and industry.

Speakers:
Aaron Knochel, Professor, Penn State University
R. Benjamin Knapp, Director, ICAT, Virginia Tech
Raphaële Bidault-Waddington, artist-researcher, futurist, LIID Future Lab
Theo Edmonds, Associate Dean/Co-Founder, University of Colorado Denver/Imaginator Academy

Moderator: Maryrose Flanigan, Executive Director, Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru).

Recap : https://a2ru.org/recap-a2rus-artistic-research-for-future-challenges/

A2RU welcomes French artist and futurist Raphaële Bidault-Waddington to present her expanded art and future research ecosystem. Building on the heritage of conceptual art, her initial statement in 2000 was to consider art as a vast laboratory to explore, question and open critical perspectives on the world, and as a way to produce knowledge, eventually disrupting conventions, borders or disciplines.

Exhibited and published, her image laboratory addresses topics ranging from aesthetic speculation and value(s) creation to cities, metaverses and future world-building, from the digital transition to the post-truth paradigm. Her idea laboratory (renamed LIID Future Lab in 2016), also occasionally published or exhibited, experiments collaborations with organizations at the frontier of art with knowledge, economy, critical design, urban design, innovation and future studies.

From 2008 to 2017, her R&D lab on the future Greater Paris metropolis, hosted at ACTE Institute (Arts Research), Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne University, was laureate of several selective academic research and pedagogic innovation programs. Her latest R&D future lab Toward Alien Cosmologies focuses on post-human and post-colonial futures, the Anthropocene and the related anthropological and epistemological reset.

Watch the Webinar: https://a2ru.org/event/introducing-an-art-based-and-future-research-ecosystem/

About the Speaker

Raphaële Bidault-Waddington is an artist-researcher, author and futurist based in Paris and working internationally. Since 2000 she has cultivated an art-based research ecosystem organized in “labs” exploring the borders of art, contemporary world transformations, and hypothetical futures.

Her work has been exhibited in galleries such as Apex Art, in New York, Over Gaden Art Center in Copenhagen, gallery Forde in Geneva, and Colette and La Villette in Paris, and published in art and theory reviews such as Marges (Paris St Denis University), Pylone in Brussels, Les Cahiers Européens de l’Imaginaires in Paris and Susch Muzeum Magazine in Switzerland. Via LIID Future Lab, she has experimented collaborations with universities (e.g., CNRS, Aalto University Helsinki, Parsons School, Science-Po Paris, Lausanne University, IHEST, etc.), urban projects (Copenhagen, Montevideo, Shanghai, Tehran, etc.), cultural places (e.g., Atelier LUMA Arles, Geneva Museum of Art and History) and companies (e.g., Peclers Paris, Bouygue Real Estate, Chanel).

She is a member of international research networks on knowledge economy and futures studies.

All her exhibitions, publications, conferences and collaborations can be viewed on www.rbidaultwaddington.net