Fiber Fiction

This exhibition and one-day colloquium on Friday, April 12 is a series of short fictions stemming from the problems and potentials of our shared forests, including their products and leading timber expertise. It assesses the current conditions and technologies regarding timber, momentarily suspending disbelief and projecting new futures. Within the forests and timber industry, thinking "a few steps further" (Butler 1998) not only requires us to critically engage with our current and past methods of operation, but forces artistic critiques of our future selves and societies. 

As a story-telling colloquium, this is a serious business. Through gathering professional and expert foresters, manufacturers, and designers to share imagined futures, these fictions provide a glimpse into our future that is both imaginative, flexible, and technical, without using standard mapping tools. Cross-disciplinary collaboration can often be tied down by practicalities, thus Fiber Fiction aims to subvert conventions and normalities within current practices in order to connect at a higher level of the potential futures: both ones we are afraid of and ones we would like to see in the world. What might we gain from suspending disbelief?

_{Bulter, Octavia. 1998. "Devil girl from Mars": Why I write science fiction. Transcript. https://www.blackhistory.mit.edu/archive/transcript-devil-girl-mars-why-i-write-science-fiction-octavia-butler-1998}