POSSIBLE FUTURES
n-Space fellowsn-Space is a new space at Somerset House Studios for interdisciplinary experimentation across art and technology. The first n-Space fellowship explores questions of governance in human and more-than-human collaboration, bringing together artists, technologists and academics to generate novel insights and interventions in emerging sociotechnical systems.
In this session, n-Space fellows Agnes Cameron, Hannah Cobb, dmstfctn, Ed Fornieles, Leela Jadhav, in conversation with n-Space curator Linda Rocco and CCI Course Leader Murad Khan discuss how futures become monopolised by corporate-state power.
Through screening fragments of Trial Trial – a mock court hearing staged by the n-Space fellows and a team of legal professionals in April, in which a fictional defence tech company was put on trial for war crimes – and reflecting on the ongoing arms industry transparency wikithons, fellows examine how individuals and companies might be held accountable when accelerated, autonomous decision-making systems lead to civilian deaths. By tracing how particular governance configurations come to appear unavoidable, this intervention asks: what stories do machines tell about collective futures, and what mechanisms – legal, collaborative, narrative – can return the seemingly inevitable to the space of moral contestation?