Workshop_Speculative ethnography of worlds to come_2024_Brisbane_ISEA24.

The workshop <i>Speculative Ethnography of Worlds to Come </i>was organised in the context of the International Symposium of Electronic Arts 2024 (ISEA24), inviting artists to re-imagine urban citizenship beyond the human using a speculative ethnographic approach in ISEA24’s host city, Brisbane/Megandjin. During the workshop, we embarked on a fieldtrip to a speculative Megandjin/Brisbane where we (re)learned, observed, and wove narratives of multispecies urban ecosystems. We aimed to explore how life in Megandjin/Brisbane would transform if its urban experience ceased to be human-centered. Participants got to know speculative thinking practices, specifically in the context of (re)building multispecies connections, giving them tools to navigate through emerging environmental challenges. This workshop acted as a research-creation event that engaged participants in a transdisciplinary co-creation process using speculative thinking approaches to imagine alternative ways of urban living. Speculative ethnography stories alternative/future/parallel worlds by integrating imaginative thought, posthuman ethnography, and artistic co-creation; it represents a form of observation of worlds to come, making visible and making sense of multispecies imaginaries that (re)tell different kinds of stories about place and country (Phillips et al., 2022). This land has not always been “Brisbane,” after all; it is located on the ancestral lands of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples, known as Megandjin. In storying alternative/future/parallel worlds to come, we took into account the intricate politics of inclusion and exclusion in (speculative) worldmaking practices, embracing trans-epistemological collaborations and connections.