Imagining possible futures: designing possible pasts?

Otto, Ton (2014) Imagining possible futures: designing possible pasts? In: Papers from the Ethnographies of the Possible Seminar. pp. 1-11. From: Ethnographies of the Possible, 10 April 2014, Aarhus, Denmark.

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Abstract

[Extract] My title is intentionally somewhat provocative. It is so in two different ways. Firstly, designing is generally understood as a process of developing ideas and forms to shape the future not the past. And secondly, one could question whether it make sense at all to talk about designing the past, since the past has already happened and therefore cannot be changed. In this paper I will develop the idea that a possible future needs a possible past to match and that part of planning the future is to conceive of a past that makes this future possible. Whether this process of conceiving and constructing the past should be called design can of course be debated, but I will argue that it is at least to be considered as an integral part of a design effort. In the cases I will discuss below the construction of the past is part of different creative events - a cultural festival, the production of a video installation, and an exhibition - and therefore I find it defendable to call it a design process in its own right.

Item ID: 33608
Item Type: Conference Item (Non-Refereed Research Paper)
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Date Deposited: 26 Mar 2015 03:37
FoR Codes: 16 STUDIES IN HUMAN SOCIETY > 1601 Anthropology > 160104 Social and Cultural Anthropology @ 50%
20 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 2002 Cultural Studies > 200299 Cultural Studies not elsewhere classified @ 50%
SEO Codes: 95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9503 Heritage > 950304 Conserving Intangible Cultural Heritage @ 50%
95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9505 Understanding Past Societies > 950599 Understanding Past Societies not elsewhere classified @ 50%
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