Photo: Ernst van Deursen

Background

2017-2018

If we want to re-imagine our ways of being in and with the world, could we then start to describe it differently?

Words for the Future is a multi-voiced series of ten words that point to possible imaginations of various futures. Ten people from different parts of the world and from different fields of knowledge were asked to propose a word for the future. Each of them wrote a text that unfolds the desired or foreseen way of thinking or doing, this word defines for them. At the same time, an artists, in whose work this particular words seems already latently present, is invited to respond to it. Bringing both the essay and the artistic responds together in one publication, each issue becomes a dialogue around one word.

Contributors: Rachel Armstrong, Andrea Bozic & Julia Wilms, Daniel L. Everett, Sarah Moeremans, Jalada | Moses Kilolo, The Future | Klara van Duijkeren & Vincent Schipper, Ashish Kothari, Rodrigo Sobarzo, Gurur Ertem, Ogutu Muraya, Silvia Bottiroli, Jozef Wouters, Simon(e) van Saarloos, Simone Truong & team, Isabelle Stengers, Ola Macijewksa, Nina Power, Michiel Vandervelde, Natalia Chaves Lopez, Hilda Moucharrafieh.

Words for the Future was initiated, curated and published by Nienke Scholts, self-published in co-production with Veem House for Performance, and designed and printed by Print The Future. Every issue is printed in a limted edition of 50 booklets. The issues where sold seperately and as full series at the Veem House bookstore, at Walter Koenig / Stedelijk Museum and with Books on the Move during European dance festivals and through their online catalogue. (There is still 9 full series and a different x amount of each seperate words in store.)

Project-website

The Re-Publishing Project | XPUB Rotterdam

2020

Words for the Future meets XPUB Rotterdam for a re-publishing project. The aim is to re-publish the Words for the Future series in collaboration with the first year XPUB MA students and mentoring team as the special issues project #13. Central to the project is the question:

What does it mean to re-publish?

etymology

    PUBLISH: mid-14c., "make publicly known, reveal, divulge, announce;"alteration of publicen (early 14c.) by influence of banish, finish, etc.; from extended stem of Old French publier "make public, spread abroad, communicate," from Latin publicare "make public," from publicus "public" (see public). Meaning "issue (a book, etc.) to the public" is from late 14c., also "to disgrace, put to shame; denounce publicly."Related: Published; publishing. In Middle English the verb also meant "to people, populate; to multiply, breed" (late 14c.), for example ben published of "be descended from."

  prefix RE- : word-forming element meaning "back to the original place; again, anew, once more," also with a sense of "undoing," c. 1200, from Old French and directly from Latin re- "again, back, anew, against.. 

Parameters

Looking into the etymologies of ‘-re’ and of ‘publishing’ is only one possible starting point to inform us on the question ‘what does it mean to re-publish something?’. For example: to understand re-publishing as ‘going back to the original place’. This could be for example understood as; looking again at the original departing point of Words for the Future, and to attend to the process of making the publications. OR, to explore how to somehow ‘undo’ the process of publishing by ‘doing it anew’. Furthermore, the translation from one technological context into another; from printed to digitial publication, and back, but also from one particular audience to another, and from copyright to open access, is going to influence our possible approach(es) to re-publishing. Ofcourse, the original material and content of the series, the words, essays and images themselves, are important entry points towards the ways in which they can be re-published. What is for example a LIQUID way of making something public again? How could the speculation on punctuationmarks by Michiel Vandevelde inspire our design or typographic choices? Following on these and other questions, within the ten weeks of the semester we are going to explore and develop a collaborative re-publishing practice.

Another parameter the process of re-publishing particularly seems to allow for is making visible the web of relations between the contributions: When the series was finished it became apparent that even though the visions on the future came from people from different parts of the world; Dehli, Nairobi, Istanbul, Chili, Beirut, Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, the U.S.A, Colombia, Poland, etc., and from various fields of knowledge; politcal philosophy, literature, history, social science, curation, linguistics, experimental architecture, biodiversity activism, sociology, education and the arts - their ideas, worries and desires strongly resonate with each other. On one hand this is not surprising, even though they live at the other ends of the world I still got to them via via via my network - and in the end they all are 'left-oriented' thinkers that value inter-species relations, alternative governing models that take into account the logics of eco-systems and communities, sustainable workforms, intersectional approaches, feminist languages, storytelling, speculative thinking, reciprocity and so on. On the other hand it raises the question why these people still mainly operate within their particular fields when they have similar ideas that could be made stronger when brought together. The series takes a first step in bringing them together, but still all visions are seperate within their own issue. How can we use the re-publishing process to connect their visions further, and to articulate and make visible a map of collective inter/trans-disciplinary thinking?

Issue 13

Map of relations, by Aymeric Mansoux

For the Words for the Future re-publishing project we'll work on:

1. Re-publishing the original material online.

Making it available to a wide range of audiences, sharable, downloadable, usable. How to translate from print to digital? From one technological space to another?

1b. Writing an open access license

Words for the Future is automatically copyrighted even though / because it was not consciously given copy right or another license. In order to give it an easy accessible afterlife after its exclusive limited editions on print, we are making the content open access. In order to do so we are going to write a license that describes how the material can be re-used, treated and re-published by other readers/writers. The material of Words for the Future - i.e. the ten words / visions for the future - can guide us in the possible ethics, values, attitudes we'd want to include in the license.

Workshop on open source licenses by Aymeric.

2. re-publishing words for the future as map of relations - or ‘interstitial dramaturgy’

Making visible the web of resonance of visions / thoughts / worries / desires in between the different contributions and issues; the interstitial dramaturgy so to say. To map out this web of words for the future not as seperate thoughts but as a vocabulary / language of collective thinking and action.

MAPPING through:

> annotating > copying / versioning > speaking / broadcasting > expanding

Material

here all the pdf's will be added

LIQUID OTHERNESS PRACTICAL VISION ECO-SWARAJ HOPE TENSE UNDECIDABILITY RESURGENCE !? ATATA

Schedule

Week 1

Tuesday 22 September

IRL Kick-off meeting Nienke + Aymeric + Steve + Manetta (morning)

Morning: introduction to the project, going through the programme, how do we work

Afternoon: reading and annotation first text(s) Nienke + Steve

Week 2

Tuesday 29 sept

IRL Nienke + Steve

Day: reading and annotating Words for the Future texts in different groups

Link: File:Sedgwick paranoid reading plain.pdf

References http://www.ivanamuller.com/works/notes/

Week 3

Monday 5 October

ONLINE Steve

Continuation annotations

Tuesday 6 October

IRL Nienke + Aymeric

Day: Open Access License Writing

Words for the Future is automatically copyrighted even though / because it was not consciously given copy right or another license; there is also no contract about this with the printers or co-publishers. In order to give it an easy accessible afterlife after its exclusive limited editions on print, we are making the content open access - all authors agreed with this. In order to make it open access we need to write a license for words for the future series. Instead of f.e. using a creative commons license, we get a workshop from Aymeric who knows all about the history of license writing for open source software.

What are the ethics of republishing / and of re-using?

What are responsibilities of republishing? (What does the author ‘allow’ versus what does the material invite?)

What sort of licence(s) do the words themselves propose?

Week 4

Tuesday 13 oct

IRL Steve + Nienke

Morning: exchange texts / annotations Afternoon: mapping relations

Publishing A0.

Week 5

19-23 oct - autumn holiday

Week 6 - 10

Schedule follows.