Rehearsing the Future Through Design

Rehearsing the Future Through Design explores the relationship between envisioning and desiring a more just future and the need to take action in the present, in order to make that future reality. By using the non-linear lens of queer temporality, it questions the prevailing myth of an ever-progressing future rooted in conventional tradition and investigates how and on whose terms that progress is defined. Arguing that we cannot take the future or justice for granted, that it is not unconditional, but rather its formation is in the hands of all of us in the now. Told from a design perspective, it aims to help identify the conditions of the present, as design acts as a temporal index that visually reflects our times, current values, fashions, and preferences. It also explores design as a tool that can be used to chart our way out of the oppressive and restrictive aspects of the now through the practice of rehearsal. This metaphor envisions the present as a stage in which the future is enacted, and becomes real through repetition. Allowing us to practice new ways of belonging while being rooted in the now.