Speculating surveillant futures past – a case study of the south side speculations project

ABSTRACT This article surveys the media arts practice-based research involved in the South Side Speculations (SSS) project. SSS was an intergenerational collaboration among Chicago-based high school students, arts and humanities scholars, and practicing artists and storytellers facilitated by the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Chicago that sought to reimagine the pasts and futures of local neighbourhoods in Chicago’s South Side with the aim of rethinking political systems for social justice. In particular, SSS participants interrogated the interplay between forms of racialised structural violence and emergent surveillance technologies. The youth-led projects resulted in three major contributions to the field of speculative design. First, futures can only be imagined by also reimagining the past and the historical narratives that make any kind of future possible. Second, futures must engage hyperlocal contexts to consider concretely how speculative design objects will exist in specific material realities. Third, young people can use speculative design to interrogate the role of institutions in their communities and increase the agency they have in their futures. Ultimately, this article argues that speculation can enable forms of community-building through media arts practice in ways that draw from and contribute to broader collective social justice organising and activism.