Speculative Models for the Present

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P[07]Siren

Supporting Institution

Strelka Institute: The New Normal

Location

Kolyma [Russia]

Year

2018

Output

Artic poem
Speculative short film

On

Xenofeminism
Global freight

Genre

Infrastructural porn

This speculative video clip was developed as the result of a research field trip to the Kolyma* region in the Russian Far East under the course of The New Normal Urban Design Think-Tank in 2018.

* Kolyma was the most notorious region for the Gulag labour camps between 1932 and 1954. It presents strategic mineral reserves and zones of possible oil and gas accumulation. Its principal town, Magadan, has nearly 100,000 inhabitants and is the largest port in north-eastern Russia.

Siren takes this landscape as background for a xenofeminist fable based on statistical and interview-based research into port automation and the global inversion of gender patterns in supply chain employment.

C[01]Synopsis

In December 2050 a supply chain archaeologist explores the “xenoboxes” that dot the wintry landscape of old Kolyma Port. She accesses unintended archive fragments (“data fossils”) in the data storage of the boxes that narrate the lives, memes, and visions of the nomadic “avto-provodnitsas” whose supervisory work was necessitated for a time by the transition of shipping networks to full automation.

As the xenoboxes were only intended to store localised data about discrete parts of the system, our archaeologist finds only fragmentations of communications and media in the domestic-scale xenoboxes. She hopes to piece together the ethnographic story of the avto-provodnitsas from these clips but instead discovers evidence that their collective impact on the larger system was much greater and more deliberate than anticipated.

The video oscillates between the silence of the now deserted destination node of Magadan and the fullness of the fragmented archives that capture its evolution from a place of extraction to a place of archive.

C[02]Output

 

 

Siren represents an early attempt to world-making and our first incursion in speculative filmmaking; which we understand as key vehicles for the delivery of future strategies.

Projects

Description

Client

P[10]Metabolic Sublime
Road Movie meets Energy Regime

Medialab Matadero

[+]

The Metabolic Sublime was a 6-month interdisciplinary program that problematized the current material energetic regimes on a planetary scale as well as possible alternatives of ecosystemic governance. The works developed by Raft were responsible for linking, unifying and giving internal consistency to the different themes exposed through readings, workshops and citizen projects. It was supported in the development of three work packages: A digital archive, a collection of interviews and a road movie.

[ ]See Full Project

Location

Madrid [Spain]

Year

2022-2023

Output

Digital Archive, Interview Series, Road Movie

P[09]Bio-Fold
FRAKTA Fetish for a Biodegradable Material Culture

IKEA: SPACE10

[+]

Bio-Fold stands at the intersection of material technology and cultural strategy. It deals with critical global issues such as plastic waste, soil scarcity, and deforestation due to agricultural development. Playing with cultural heritage, the project uses FRAKTA, IKEA’s iconic tote bag, as a symbolic device for the introduction of an already existing technology: vacuum bagging, in this case applied to biocomposite materials.

[ ]See Full Project

Location

Copenhagen [Denmark]

Year

2019 - Present

Output

Fabrication method | Digital interface

P[08]Seiche
Automated Bureaucracy as a Pathway to Fluid Citizenship

Strelka Institute: The New Normal

[+]

Overlapping jurisdictions and supranational infrastructures generate an increasingly complex network topology; the design, management, and mapping of their interactions is therefore a crucial task. Seiche is a speculative proposal for a visual programming platform enabling the definition and management of techno-legal procedures of information exchange between institutions that regulate such systems and the organisations that operate within.

[ ]See Full Project

Location

Khorgos [Kazakhstan]

Year

2018 - Present

Output

Speculative short film | Article | Interactive installation

P[07]Siren
Audiovisual Arctic Poem on Connective Alienation

Strelka Institute: The New Normal

[+]

Siren oscillates between the silence of the now deserted destination node of Magadan and the fullness of the fragmented archives that capture its evolution from a place of extraction to a place of archive. It emerges from statistical and interview-based research into port automation and the global inversion of gender patterns in supply chain employment...

[ ]See Full Project

Location

Kolyma [Russia]

Year

2018

Output

Speculative short film

P[06]Æffect
Acid Infused Journal on Innovation Management

UAL: Central Saint Martins

[+]

Æffect grew as a bottom-up student-led initiative to create a strong and self-perpetuating community connecting innovation management students at CSM with alumni, staff and industry leaders through a mentorship scheme, an academic journal and web platform...

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Location

London [UK]

Year

2017 - 2018

Output

Mentorship scheme | Academic journal | Web platform

P[05]Electric Cloud
Decentralised Networks of Energy Exchange

EDF: Électricité de France

[+]

The combined disruption of smart home devices and decentralised energy production and storage systems favour a progressive switch to ‘prosumerism’ in the energy market. Electric Cloud provided a strategy for EDF to adopt an ambivalent position as managers and traders in energy exchange networks, a role that would help them thrive in both a centralised or decentralised scenario...

[ ]See Full Project

Location

London [UK]

Year

2016 - 2017

Output

Business model | Strategic road map

P[04]Critical Firm
Political Conflict as a Business Strategy in the Age of Purpose

Self-directed

[+]

With ongoing, deep, systemic trust crises across western societies, the rise of populist politics can be understood as a failure of corporate social responsibility - the hegemonic identity of the corporate establishment during the last two decades - to engage extensive sectors of a highly polarised population. To reinstate trust among those sectors, the corporate world needs to perform a parallelism that offers symbolic resolutions to the ongoing societal tensions...

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Location

London [UK]

Year

2016 - 2017

Output

Strategic report | System map

P[03]Discourse on Trends
Assembly Toolkit for Authenticity in the Digital Fluid

Self-directed

[+]

A shift towards fluidity in the discourse of authenticity in gender, sexual, and racial identity has already established the generating of a new structure of power and knowledge. As technology continues to dilute the lines between physical and digital space and persona, a new regime of truth on authenticity and identity around fluidity between physical and digital environments will follow…

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Location

London [UK]

Year

2016 - 2017

Output

Strategic report | System map

P[02]Radical Swissness
An Architectural Framework for the Swiss Vernacular

group8

[+]

Define and perfection a framework and methodology for the development of architectural competitions within the Swiss context (a.k.a. domesticating the creative willpower of multidisciplinar international teams to fit the swiss vernacular...

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Location:

Genève [Switzerland]

Year:

2014-2015

Output:

Architectural competition [with several awards]

P[01]UNOG
Energetic renovation of the United Nations Palace

group8

[+]

In a demonstration of its commitment to the Strategic Heritage Plan, the Swiss Federal Council participated in the renovation of the “Palais des Nations” through a voluntary contribution of CHF 50 million. The aim of the renovation project was to bring The United Nations Palace into line with the concept of a "green building"...

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Location

Genève [Switzerland]

Year

2012 - 2014

Output

Restored building | Automated energy management system