Practice, Not Prophecy
About this Event
The Practice, Not Prophecy seminar series is a 5-part skills building workshop for artists, storytellers, and creatives interested in building visions of the future.
Who Gets to Be A Futurist?
Our communities – of queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, people of colour, working class, immigrants, people with disabilities – have always been at the forefront of world building, but we are rarely seen as futurists. Even though we continue to rebuild worlds, from dreaming of days without police brutality to abolishing borders, to initiate our own freedom.
Led by artist and educator, Bianca Nozaki-Nasser, the series examines elements of science fiction, social justice, and speculative object-making as tools that can be used by any creative. By the end of the series, participants will walk away with a diverse set of creative outputs (digital, print, conceptual work, etc) that help us dream beyond moments of crisis and bring us closer to worlds we want.
“Where do oppressed people find the permission to imagine themselves into the future? If our lives are threatened in the present, why and how would we begin to take the time to imagine the future? We get permission to imagine our own survival through the support of others in our community. When people rally together to imaginatively assert futures for themselves and others, it's not a frivolous thought exercise. It's collective survival.”
- Anaïs Duplan
The series takes place from 5:30-8:30pm on Wednesdays starting September 16. See below for session details.
Registration is for the entire 5-part series and covers materials and a Practicing Futures zine. No prior experience or work outside the session times is required. Further details will be provided after you register.
If you have any questions, or cost is a prohibiting factor for you to participate, please email [email protected].
Session #1: Wed. September 16 from 5:30-8:30pm
Are we building new worlds or redecorating old ones?
at Feminist Center for Creative Work: 3053 Rosslyn St, Los Angeles 90065
- Introduction to Futures frameworks, organizing and powermapping. Together we will begin the process of “messy making” of speculative objects that represent values from the future.
Session #2: Wed. September 23 from 5:30-8:30pm
From Balloom to Black Mirror: Whose worlds are we building?
at Feminist Center for Creative Work: 3053 Rosslyn St, Los Angeles 90065
- Together we will look at social movements through the lens of speculative world building, discuss Butlers “Rules for Predicting the Future,” and prepare for our archives visit.
Session #3: Wed. September 30 from 5-7pm
Practice, Not Prophecy
at Huntington Library: 1151 Oxford Rd, San Marino 91108
- We will take a field trip to the Butler archives housed at the Huntington Library. The purpose of our visit to the archive is to demystify and learn from Octavia as a futures practitioner, not pedestalize her as a prophet. Her prophetic work emerges not from divine foresight, but from disciplined engagement with the world around her and the courage to imagine beyond it.
- You'll get free access to the Huntington for the day and starting at 5pm we'll gather for brief introductions and an overview of the series before diving into the archives.
Session #4: Wed. October 7 from 5:30-8:30pm
Visionary Fictions
at Feminist Center for Creative Work: 3053 Rosslyn St, Los Angeles 90065
- Together we will identify storytelling tools to develop our own narratives that bring far away visions closer to everyday near futures. We will use a variety of media making and writing exercises to build the world around our objects.
Session #5: Wed. October 14 from 5:30-8:30pm
Dream Cafe
at Feminist Center for Creative Work: 3053 Rosslyn St, Los Angeles 90065
- In the final session participants will share their “messy making” of their speculative objects from the future and the additional elements we’ve designed. We’ll share our final outcomes and discuss the process and lessons presented.
Proudly hosted by in collaboration with .
About Social Practice Labs
Level Ground's Social Practice Labs are artist-led readings, seminars, and workshops inspired by revolutionary texts that lead us towards cultural and political change. The program is best suited to support artists, organizers, and cultural workers who are invested in interrogating our socio-political landscape and building pathways towards a movement-inspired creative practice. Learn more at levelground.co.
This series is presented by Practicing Futures. Founded by Bianca Nozaki-Nasser, Practicing Futures is a collaborative creative lab that uses art and design to practice to reclaim, reimagine, and shape the futures we want to see.
About Our Facilitator
Bianca Nozaki-Nasser is a Japanese-Lebanese-Syrian interdisciplinary artist. She works with visual and interactive media to understand, critique, and reimagine the future. Her work is rooted in social practice and has spanned across immersive audio video installations, speculative objects, and community engagement programs. She invites collective wrecking and reckoning, exploring the tension between building new worlds and redecorating old ones.
Bianca holds a Masters degree in Media Design Practice from the Art Center College of Design and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from the University of Southern California . They have exhibited their work across the United States and participated in several artist residencies including the Level Ground Residency Program in Los Angeles and Activation in New York. Additionally, they have co-founded and organized with artist and worker-led collectives committed to radical pedagogy and collective liberation.
Over the last ten years, Bianca has worked across industries developing strategic storytelling, creative interventions, and community power for clients and collaborators like Sundance, UNICEF Innovation, Asian American Documentary Network, and The California Endowment. During her five year tenure as 18 Million Rising’s inaugural Creative Director, Bianca built the visual identity that established the organization as a digital leader in progressive Asian American organizing. Previously, she co-founded a med-tech platform for patient generated health data management.
Bianca currently resides in Los Angeles and is the Director of Storytelling at Emergent Fund, a rapid response resource fund that supports emergent organizing led by frontline Black, Indigenous, and people of color. In addition to her creative practice, Bianca is the founder of Practicing Futures and an assistant professor.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 65.00
