Ancestral and Cultural Futuring: Speculative Design in an Indigenous ovaHimba context

by Elena Blagoeva | Aug 9, 2023 | Scientific publication

Ancestral and Cultural Futuring: Speculative Design in an Indigenous ovaHimba context

Authors:

Chris Muashekele (AAU), Heike Winschiers-Theophilus (NUST), Kasper Rodil (AAU), Alphons Koruhama (NUST)

Executive summary:

This paper presents the first instance and experience of futuring in two indigenous ovaHimba communities in northwest Namibia. Over a series of sessions, we, as part of a broad green energy access project, explore futuring to stimulate and invoke alternative green energy use cases. These alternatives are premised on the opposition of the dominant needs-based and interventionist approach and imagination of unorthodox green energy utilisation that supersedes mainstream, rudimentary and obvious energy use. We reflect on the application of futuring, particularly speculative design, in an indigenous context, highlighting the communities’ back-looking future perspective, and relevance and influence of ancestry and culture over the future. As well as accentuate the friction towards speculative design, arguing for its appropriation and alignment to a more grounded design approach. Moreover, we indicate the agency that it provides, allowing local participants to re-evaluate their values and practices and simultaneously determine the integration of technology into the future.

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Futuring from an indigenous community stance: projecting temporal duality from the past into the future

by Elena Blagoeva | Aug 9, 2023 | Scientific publication

Futuring from an indigenous community stance: projecting temporal duality from the past into the future

Authors:

Chris Muashekele (AAU), Kasper Rodil (AAU), Heike Winschiers-Theophilus (NUST), Christof Magoath (Donkerbos community)

Executive summary:

This paper presents the first instance and experience of futuring with a rural San community from the Kalahari desert in Donkerbos, Namibia. Over a series of sessions we explore divergent speculative design and design fiction methods to stimulate and invoke alternative green energy use cases. These alternatives are premised on the imagination of unorthodox green energy use, superseding interventionist energy use which is constantly propagated and mainstream. We showcase the application of speculative design and design fiction in challenging the dominant interventionist approach and singular temporal view, resulting in a dissentient dual temporality. As well as demonstrate its utility and inadequacies in transitioning an African rural indigenous community into the speculative, arguing for the appropriation and widening of futuring methods in an African context.

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