Futures From Ruins

Understanding that the ground we walk on is in a state of constant transformation is a powerful invitation to remake it, continually, anew.

When ruins become ground for creation rather than objects from devastated pasts, they cultivate belief in what’s possible. It’s a shift that people like Tsing insist is essential to moving beyond extractive cycles of “promise and ruin, promise and ruin.”

Tsing encourages us to look beyond those simplistic narratives, and to ask what else ruins might allow to emerge. As portals to past realities, ruins have the capacity to cultivate connection across history, geography, and culture.

The creativity people are bringing to their homes is an extension of the care Bombay Beach inspired long before the Biennale began. Many small towns foster solidarity and connection. Harsh landscapes inspire support as well.

The ongoing work of making the spaces in which we live cultivates a kind of alchemy, in which stronger links between people and place can arise.

Challenging the past as a viable template for the future is an important part of envisioning and enacting new futures. The parts of the brain responsible for creative imagination are directly linked to those that store and manage memories. Our ideas about the future are essentially tapestries remixed from of our memories of former days.

Deeper connections between people support more creative imagination of what’s possible.

People have been inspired to create new spaces, rituals and infrastructure amongst ruins for millennia, artists in particular. From London to Berlin to Rome to Manila, many cities have been continually built anew atop the wreckage of their pasts, with creative groups often leading the way.

anthropologist Anna Tsing’s ideas about ruins as fertile ground for new life: ruins are places that support the unruly, entwined strains of existence, proving that life can thrive long after apocalypse occurs.