Special Edition

Speculative Praxis & The No Normal

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Photo by Laura Forlano, January 2021; Pictured: Artwork by Jessica Hargreaves, “Nunc tempus est” with reflection of artwork by Roya Farassat, 12 paintings from “Women Gilded” Series, 601Artspace, New York

Laura Forlano is Associate Professor of Design at the Institute of Design (ID) and Affiliated Faculty in the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology, where she is Director of the Critical Futures Lab (lforlano@id.iit.edu)

This blog post relates to the Global Discourse article Laura Forlano: Foreword

We cannot rationalize our way out of a crisis – or, to be more exact, the multiple crises that we face. We cannot audit our way towards a better future. We cannot merely criticize the failures of the past or those of the moment. We must have an artist’s vision, we must cultivate an activist’s ability to reimagine and we must create a collective dream that allows us to enact and experience alternatives to the current conditions. In short, we must embrace a speculative praxis.

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Domestic Drone Futures: Investments and Imaginations

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Drone https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/219049ea-c7fe-48cb-9b43-4ab9f9579f5a
Drone camera (Creative commons)

Dr Maximilian Jablonowski (jablonowski@isek.uzh.ch) is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Zurich; Dr Anna Jackman (Anna.Jackman@rhul.ac.uk) is a Lecturer in Political Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London.

This blog post relates to the Global Discourse article Anna Jackman and Maximilian Jablonowski: Investment in the imaginary

Setting the scene

On the evening of 1 December 2013, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos presented on CBS a video advert for the company’s new project; named Prime Air, the venture promised the shipment of goods to customers via drones within thirty minutes. This announcement was likely the first discursive event of commercial drone use. While initially exposed to ridicule, Amazon’s plan went on to change how commercial drones, and in fact drones more widely, are publicly imagined. Since then, drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, have been increasingly re-imagined and re-spatialised from battlefield origins to their growing embrace as domestic actors transforming urban skies. If we are, as it is asserted, entering into a ‘drone age’ or ‘zeitgeist’, the aerial delivery drone is a key facet of this evolving drone imagination.

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The Limits of EUrope

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‘The Limits of EUrope’ special edition of Global Discourse is out this month… Co-editor Russell Foster previews the edition:

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Russell Foster, Co-Editor of Global Discourse: EUrope Special Edition.

‘EUrope’ is changing. In the most visible way this change has recently manifested itself in a drawn-out Brexit which will satisfy no-one, the rise of Euroscepticism and illiberal democracies in response to immigration and integration failures, a potentially resurgent eurozone crisis and continuing economic disparities across the EU, and mounting perceptions of a democratic deficit and the (il)legitimacy of EU institutions. These raise many difficult questions, the hardest of which is – can the EU survive?

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