Guerrilla Futures
Stuart Candy Ph.D. | @futuryst
OCAD University | Long Now Foundation
Festival of Transitional Architecture (FESTA), Christchurch
26.oct.02013

Strategic Guerrilla
Foresight Futures
Tactical
Media

Strategic Foresight is “the ability to create and
maintain a high-quality, coherent and
functional forward view and to use the
insights arising in [practically] useful ways.”
- Richard Slaughter, The Foresight Principle

Tactical media is “a form of media activism
that privileges temporary, hit-and-run
interventions in the media sphere … that
engage and critique the dominant political
and economic order.”
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_media

Hawaii 2050
(2006)
Four “experiential futures”, immersive scenarios
set in Hawaii in 2050, were staged for 500+ participants
embarking on a public sustainability planning process.
(Not a guerrilla project, but a starting point…)

Our view:
Routine foresight lacks impact
and
“Experiential futures” showed promise
but
Official processes were too timid to succeed

= If you can’t do it officially,
do it unofficially

FoundFutures:
Postcards from the future (2007)
Postcards from four different versions of Hawaii
circa 2030 were mailed out serially to the homes of
over 100 community leaders.

FoundFutures:
Artifacts from the future
(2006/07)
Installations of playful and provocative future
artifacts in urban places, for people to encounter
in the midst of their everyday lives.

FoundFutures: Chinatown
(2007)
Future artifacts from three scenarios for a much-loved
neighbourhood. We created the stories after speaking
with residents and business owners in the area
about its history and their latent concerns.

‘Green Dragon’
What becomes of Chinatowns when China
is the predominant geopolitical superpower?

FoundFutures: Chinatown
“Green Dragon”

‘The Bird Cage’
How would the community fare
if a bird flu outbreak occurred in Chinatown?

‘McChinatown’
How would it feel for gentrification
to take over the neighbouthood?

Advertising at Copenhagen
airport during COP 15 (2009)
Greenpeace and tcktcktck urged the world’s leaders
not to miss an historic opportunity.

Earthquake awareness
in San Francisco (2007)
The Bay Area Red Cross temporarily placed
a double-sided billboard at the bottom of Market Street
in quake-prone San Francisco, vividly visualising seismic
destruction and encouraging disaster preparedness.

New York Times
Special Edition (2008)
Culture jamming activists The Yes Men and
artist Steve Lambert distributed an idealised
future edition of the newspaper, featuring
“all the news we hope to print”.

FoundFutures:
The People Who Vanished
(2012)
A participatory experiential scenario (performance +
mixed media installations) was staged with our
collaborators in Phoenix for the first ‘Emerge’ festival at
Arizona State University.

Hypothetical Development
Organization (2010)
Rob Walker and collaborators installed fanciful
signage in the streets of New Orleans, suggesting
imaginative new uses for disused buildings.

Compare with
‘unsolicited architecture’

“Unsolicited architects do not wait to tackle
the big issues often overlooked by the market.
They create briefs where none are written,
discover sites where none are owned,
approach clients where none are present, and
find financing where none is available.”
- Rory Hyde

Guerrilla futures
combines strategic foresight
with tactical media…

…to produce unexpected
encounters with possible worlds.

Guerrilla futures principles:
. Don’t break the universe
. The tip of the iceberg
. The art of the double-take
. playfully
. collectively

The point is to show,
as well as tell, different stories…

…bringing futures to life in order
to influence how we act today.

Plus it’s fun.

Take back the future!

Thanks.
More at:
foundfutures.org
futuryst.com
@futuryst