Cones and Caution: The Precarity of Signaling the Future

If you need to leave a message for the people of the future, what you want to say might not be as important as how you say it, and where, and using what medium. How might the meaning of written language or visual symbols change over time? What happens if our materials degrade or our messages get moved by construction or natural disaster? Is it even possible to exactly express ourselves across great spans of time, given how often we struggle to communicate clearly with those in our own present? 

In this workshop, our panelists will explore how they read the messages humans and nonhumans leave behind, including warnings meant for future peoples who may or may not know how to read them. Despite being made for other humans, these signs also give us a glimpse into a world not for us, one larger than human construction and our linguistic markers.

Hosted by Humanities Institute, the ASU Worldbuilding Initiative invites all members of our community — at ASU and beyond it — to come together in mutual inspiration, communal thinking, and imaginative play. In each of our workshops, audience members will be encouraged to engage in worldbuilding alongside our guest presenters, inventing new ways of imagining and interacting with the world around us.  

This hybrid event is free and open to the public, in addition to the ASU community. It will be held at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing on the Tempe Campus and simultaneously livestreamed via Zoom, with full participation in the night's activities possible online or in-person.

Our lecturers for this event will be ASU's Ron Broglio and Erika Hanson.  

Ron Broglio writes books and essays on nonhuman phenomenology, post-rational knowing, and animal studies. He curates and produces environmental art and experiences. Broglio is director of the Humanities Institute at Arizona State University and Field Marshal of the Animal Revolution.

Erika Lynne Hanson is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator whose work is rooted in textile practices. Her projects range from video installations to participatory public workshops that actively engage with various sites and their inhabitants. Currently Associate Professor of Textiles/Socially Engaged Practices at Arizona State University, Hanson received her MFA from California College of the Arts, and a BFA in Fiber from The Kansas City Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited at spaces that range from Form + Concept in Santa Fe, to Field Projects in NYC, to the Tucson Museum of Art. Additionally, Hanson has participated in residency programs across the US and Scandinavia, with particular attention to rural locations that support the ongoing dialogue regarding posthuman ecologies within her practice. 

About the Worldbuilding Initiative

The ASU Worldbuilding Initiative endeavors to identify and engage the realists of a larger reality at ASU: students, faculty, and staff invested in imagining stronger communities, more egalitarian societies, truly sustainable economies, more just ways of inhabiting a planet under duress, and other ways of making better futures together.

• For in-person attendees, light refreshments and drinks will be provided.
• For online attendees, the event will be livestreamed on ASU Live.

For a full listing of all the Humanities Institute events visit https://humanitiesinstitute.asu.edu/events