possibility studies
it’s important for artists to engage with these conditions, but if the response is too tethered to the present, that does sometimes foreclose the possibility of imagining alternatives. Likewise, if the response is set too far into the future, it can quickly disintegrate into something abstract - like far-flung science-fiction vs the more
... See moreOn Technology and Humanity: Alice Bucknell and Her Alternative Worlds
Without curiosity, possibility cannot appear on the scene, and without possibility, curiosity has no scene to work with in the first place. The two make one another possible.
Perry Zurn, Dani S. Bassett • Curiosity and Networks of Possibility
when we are born, we experience reality with very few “priors” – preexisting beliefs, expectations, conceptual schemas through which to filter what we see. And so a child’s experience is an endless explosion of vividness. Slowly we start to make sense of the world, we start to notice repeating patterns, we start to establish boundaries between “me”... See more
Kasra • Tastes of magic
What changes the world in the end is the generative ideas, not the detailed blueprints. But the blueprints are useful tools for thinking with—they help to clarify ideas and can show unexpected consequences. Developing them is part of being positively engaged with the world. It’s easy to be against things and easy to be a critic; much harder to
... See moreGeoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
Beyond immediate sensory information, we create our perceptions of the social and physical world using a range of highly personal sources collected across our lifetimes.
T. L. Uglow • A Curiosity of Doubts: Penguin Special
Our relationship to the possible is grounded in action in and on the world. This also means that it is mediated by a variety of material and symbolic tools, including a range of technologies. As such, human culture is both the origin and outcome of our engagement with the possible. Cultural processes are, in this sense, helping us navigate, as
... See moreVlad P. Glăveanu • Possibility Studies: A Manifesto
The overwhelming threat of climate change has amplified the sense that global capitalism is out of control or that the best we can hope for is to avert catastrophe.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
As stated by Glăveanu (2022) in his Manifesto, “[t]he possible re-emerges as an organizing category in our lives and our thinking not despite but because of living through the seemingly impossible and unimaginable.” The possible, transitions, temporalities, and the pluriverse appear as part of the same complex process of civilizational transition.
... See moreArturo Escobar • Welcome to Possibility Studies
It is just that easy to open—or to limit—possibility. The approach, the tone, the details matter.
The approach is seeking—not to lock down a particular direct corrective, although those are necessary at times—but instead to include the nth-order—the ecological habit of change that changes change and keeps changing. There is a realm of "possible"
... See more