Speculating surveillant futures past – a case study of the south side speculations project

ABSTRACT

This article surveys the media arts practice-based research involved in the South Side Speculations (SSS) project. SSS was an intergenerational collaboration among Chicago-based high school students, arts and humanities scholars, and practicing artists and storytellers facilitated by the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Chicago that sought to reimagine the pasts and futures of local neighbourhoods in Chicago’s South Side with the aim of rethinking political systems for social justice. In particular, SSS participants interrogated the interplay between forms of racialised structural violence and emergent surveillance technologies. The youth-led projects resulted in three major contributions to the field of speculative design. First, futures can only be imagined by also reimagining the past and the historical narratives that make any kind of future possible. Second, futures must engage hyperlocal contexts to consider concretely how speculative design objects will exist in specific material realities. Third, young people can use speculative design to interrogate the role of institutions in their communities and increase the agency they have in their futures. Ultimately, this article argues that speculation can enable forms of community-building through media arts practice in ways that draw from and contribute to broader collective social justice organising and activism.

KEYWORDS:

• Surveillance
• speculation
• speculative design
• structural violence
• policing

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the South Side Speculation staff from the Transmedia Story Lab and History Moves, including Patrick Jagoda, Jennifer Brier, Ireashia Bennett, Chelsea Ridley, Jen Ash, and Márquez Rhyne, as well as the numerous artists, scholars, storytellers, and community organisers that partook in the programme. Most of all, the author thanks the youth participants who led the way in reconceptualising the stakes of speculative design and reimagining what is possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 During the course of the two year program, South Side Speculations was originally referred to as the Transmedia Collage Project (TCP). The title of the project changed to SSS when the youth-created projects were displayed at local galleries in 2019.

2 The full video for ‘Clones and Protective Wear’ is available to view through the YouTube account for the Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health (Ci3) at the University of Chicago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfn4BdFwstE.

3 The full video for ‘Community Healing Pair’ is available to view through the YouTube account for the Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Innovation in Sexual and Reproductive Health (Ci3) at the University of Chicago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlrqerfusRI.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Humanities Without Walls Consortium, The Work of the Humanities in a Changing Climate grant supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Gary Kafer

Gary Kafer is a PhD candidate in Cinema and Media studies at the University of Chicago. His scholarship engages issues within surveillance studies, media studies, and theories of race, gender, and sexuality. His work has appeared in numerous venues, including Digital Culture and Society, Contemporaneity, qui parle, and American Literature, as well as in the edited collection From Self Portrait to Selfie: Representing the Self in the Moving Image (2019). He is coeditor of a special issue of Surveillance and Society on ‘Queer Surveillance’ (2019). From 2016 to 2019, he was a graduate student fellow for the South Side Speculations project.