Speculating a Nomadic Post-Climate Change Future

How will it feel to live in a climate change future? What new social systems will emerge as climate migration becomes more of a reality in the United States? Are there alternatives to dystopian climate futures? These questions are at the core of this speculative design project, the final result of which was a 25 minute experiential scenario that immersed 30 people in one possible climate change future.

Our team’s motivations for focusing on this topic stemmed from our acknowledgment that climate migration is already a reality for many communities around the world. While much of the Western world has yet to experience the full impacts of climate change, a world with a harsher climate is an inevitability for everyone. When discussing this issue, our team recognized a variety of current day tensions that felt important to recognize:

the evolution of technology has furthered society’s development, but has also contributed to climate change
many turn to technology to address the challenges we face, but lower-tech, indigenous and ancient practices might already have the answers
communities that often contribute the most to climate change and have the most power to change the status quo are also the ones currently least impacted by climate change

All members of the team felt that in order to engage with climate change in a more constructive and equitable manner, it was important to see a different way for communities to live and work together.

“Back home we say ‘this is where we got to live’ -‘aqui nos toco vivir’ - and the experience really

resonated with the phrase - it felt like making the best of the situation.”

-Participant

Future Themes Explored

Data Feminism

The principles of data feminism, created by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein, inspired many of the themes we wanted to embed into our experience. These principles are: examining power, elevating emotion and the body, rethinking binaries and hierarchies, embracing pluralism, paying attention to difference, considering context and making labor visible. We used these principles to drive our experience’s activities and world-building.

Multi-species Design

Inspired by authors such as Donna Haraway, we had several conversations about the relationship we wanted to create between humans and other species in our scenario. We felt that nomadic humans of the future might be more dependent upon animals like birds for cues about where to find temperate weather and when to migrate. We wanted people in our scenario to have intentional practices for incorporating the voices and needs of non-human elements of the world into their decision-making processes, and referenced this in one of. the roles in our apprenticeship scenario.

Afrofuturism

Many of the themes from Afrofuturism also helped us develop our scenario. In particular, we were inspired by what Afrofuturism has to say about the relationship between technology and nature. In our scenario, technology is not meant to replace nature, but to help humans survive in a new climate reality and live in symbiosis with nature. Technology is present, but not the main focus. It helps people breed new climate-resistant crops, track water sources, and generate power, but the focus is on relationship and community. The ethos of Afrofuturism also helped us think about the questions to raise for participants and how we wanted them to feel. We wanted to create a non-extractive world in which labor is distributed equitably and the most vulnerable are cared for rather than forgotten.

The Experience

Our team’s experiential scenario was set in the context of a nomadic community that formed after ‘The Great Turning’, the traumatic disaster where our climate collapsed and society had to rebuild again around the climate. We crafted a narrative around the world this society lives in, the former-United States now known as Clovaland. In Clovaland, there is only one, highly exclusive, climate-controlled region with high levels of technology and a promise for residents to never have to move and live a nomadic lifestyle. However, for the majority of residents not in the region, the nomadic lifestyle is needed to survive the ever-changing climates, since there are very few areas in Clovaland where it’s safe to live year round. For this type of life to be successful, we wanted to show our participants another way of living that was reliant on community, interdependence, new climate-relevant skills, and a juxtaposition between low and high tech usage. In this experience we stepped foot into a graduation ritual that every participant was involved in through an immersive theater-type of experience, and highlighted the somatic elements of the scenario. We explored how ritual, strong individual relationships and human adaptability can exist within a larger context of environmental devastation

“[the scenario] gave me the feeling like everything sucks but we are still good. We go through life and expand small parts of happiness. It felt like we were in a utopian space even though it was a dystopian world.”

- Participant

Setting the scene

To simulate being in an outdoor settlement, we set up a tent with "generator" powered lights, covered the floor in mismatched blankets and pillows, hung laundry “to dry,” and covered the TV with a tapestry that represented the desert.

We crafted an intimate setting by creating a campfire by weaving white string lights through stones and sticks. One of our team members played soothing guitar music throughout the ceremony.

This dais was the centerpiece of the ritual. Pictured on the dais are the necklaces given to each apprentice with one bead added for each year of mastery, a record scroll with a list of apprentices from each season, a bowl of mud from the land the community settled on, and a large pot of soil next to an assortment of jars filled with seeds cultivated and passed down by the “foremothers” for generations.

Each participant was given a pillow, a

small ceramic mug of lukewarm lemon

tea, and a script that told them their roles and lines and helped them follow along with the ceremony.

On the periphery of the room, we included references to the survival technology the community might use to grow food and generate power, such as a seed incubator and solar powered portable green house. While we didn’t explicitly reference any of these features during the ceremony, we included them in the room to give participants a window into the world in which the ceremony was taking place. Our most clever technological prop was printing out a photo of a generator and taping it over the real power outlet.

Holding the ceremony

Story Reading

Each “Elder” that was honoring their apprentice shared a story about the apprentice’s journey to mastery in their specific skill, and through these stories we opened more windows into what life was like in this post-climate change world. The skills that apprentices learned were either technology and survival forward, or social and community forward.

Scroll Signing

Once the elder finished the story, they placed the necklace around the apprentice’s head. Then the apprentice chose a seed and planted it in the soil that would be buried in the ground to grow for future nomadic communities to find after this current community leaves. Finally the apprentice dipped their thumb into the mud and marked a thumbprint by their name in the scroll.

The graduation ritual began with a group call and

response. As each elder was called, they shared a story about the apprentice they were initiating. Elders then bestowed individually-crafted necklaces upon each apprentice, after which point each apprentice planted a seed and placed their thumbprint on the scroll.

To end the ceremony, we asked a volunteer to read the above

song lyrics by Libby Roderick, which could not have more

perfectly described the sentiment that we wanted to convey

about how this community viewed their relationship with the

Earth.

Tears were shed throughout the room, and then the ceremony ended with an invitation to pick up your pillow seat, and return to your dwellings to sleep before tomorrow's departure to the next settlement.

Click here to read the full report

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