Co-Designing Multispecies Speculations Through Biofuturing

Abstract

Amidst the growing concerns of global warming, there is an increasing demand for creative research approaches that address impending crises while simultaneously imagining sustainable modes for humans to coexist with the natural world. In response to this appeal, we introduce the concept/practice of ‘biofuturing.’ Drawing inspiration from the field of bio art, biofuturing presents a creative research approach concerned with the co-design of multispecies speculations of worlds to come. We engaged 21 scholars in a three-day biofuturing event, combining a living lab methodology with futures studies techniques and creative practices. In this paper, we present biofuturing in – and in between – theory and practice, and we discuss how the co-designed futures speculations address existing and emerging challenges from a multispecies perspective. We suggest that biofuturing holds potential as a relational research and creation approach, essentially presenting a creative ecology on the intersection of transdisciplinary collaboration, multispecies entanglements, and multi-temporal thinking.