We who are about to...

Research process (rigor)
Deborah Jackson, was commissioned by MAP to conceive of and curate We who are about to… which was selected to be part of Glasgow International 2018, world-renowned art festival.

Jackson’s ongoing research is an exploration into the ways that the future’s cultural roots are determined in relation to dominant power structures. We who are about to… continues this research by focusing on speculative visions of the future as rehearsed through intersectional feminist curating, art and writing practices. Curation is used as a strategic gesture that aims to reflect on socioeconomic and institutional infrastructures through art and writing. It considers what kinds of futures do art institutions invoke, constitute, or require by setting up horizons of the possible and impossible.

Research insights (originality)
This project challenges the standard readings of the future e.g. in science fiction, which are cultivated from modernist male positions that advocate ideas around progress, utopia and rational calculation. We who are about to… asserts that these ideas have ceased to fit the 21st century. By building on work by feminist and intersectional scholars this project responds to the urgent need to form new cultural, ideological, political and economic templates for the future that no longer exclude women from history and subsequently the from narratives of the future.

Research dissemination (significance)
This is realised through a curatorial approach that takes account of women’s testimonies of the future. Ten female artists and writers were selected for the project which anticipates expansive counter-futures through its multiple forms: a print publication; a series of online curated texts; exhibitions; a pop-up shop; film screenings; performance events; and workshops.

The project constitutes a critical opportunity to imagine future modes of being that are potentially politically transformative. The work aims to engage audiences with future orientated approaches that propose alternative fictions and futures directly linked to everyday life, and that offer opportunities to define and inhabit social change.