This was the second workshop in the series, focused on “Approaches” to fabulating, building on the first workshop on “Concepts”. 

Day 1: Threads we carried from the Umeå workshop, to continue tying knots  

As both an introduction and a refresher, we started this workshop with a short presentation with an overview of what we have come to understand fabulating to be. The things we carried from Umeå were introduced as “things to thinkwith”, positioning fabulation as an ongoing practice that carries throughout design and research, and highlighting the potential of fabulation as an approach to:  

1. Imagine and create representations of alternative social relations—ways of designing, ways of knowing, and ways of living with or without technology,  

2. Trouble established ways of knowing,  

3. Understand, work with, and make theory.  

We stressed that we have been exploring fabulation as materially grounded but with the potential to trouble existing imaginaries and representations, that fabulation needs to account for historical and political dimensions, power imbalances, embodied and embedded accounts of concerned subjects or subject groups, but the resulting figuration is not necessarily expected to take human form or character. To explore this duality, we invited Camilla Mørch Røstvik, Associate Professor in History at the University of Agder, Norway, to talk about her research on Remembering Witches: Memorials, Memory and Magic in Public Space. In the talk she talked about how memorials and memory matter through the example of the witch memorials that do exist – and the many that do not. She argued that the witch is an extraordinary figure to memorialize, due to their position as both fictional character and victim of patriarchal imagining, and as an iconic figure of real power. They can teach us about the status of history, gender, abuse of power, and documentation in public space; who gets to be remembered, and who is missing. But the witch is also a popular figure because they are associated with magic, enchantment, and transformations – concepts seldom seen or celebrated in public. 

In the first workshop activity, participants worked in smaller groups and used big sheets of paper to make relations between Umeå North Stars and the figure of the witch. The aim was to decide which threads we wanted to bring with us from the keynote and slowly start identifying and mapping out Nordic futures of care. Next, new groups were formed, based on the North Stars participants wanted to fabulate with. To help orient participants, we prompted them to take a fabric pouch and select among printed cards with the tactics and North Stars, and put them in the bag—inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag—to build out the concepts they wanted to bring with them in the workshop today.  We invited participants to use the concepts to guide an opening conversation on North Star with their group, starting from their own research. We also invited participants to add their own cares, concerns, methods, orientations to their carrier bag. 

Next, the groups were invited to explore their chosen topics through collage-making and writing short stories. The following prompts were provided for this activity: 1. Amplify a positive present or think of an alternative to a grand/dominant narrative. 2. Reconsider who is included or at the center of your story. Challenge the hero story. 3. How does your story intersect with social, cultural, and environmental dimensions?  

Day 2: Materialising and showing fabulation 

In the second day, participants continued to materialize their fabulations in in their groups, aiming to finalize them in whatever form they felt was important to communicate their concept.  We asked the groups to consider how this work was or could be generative for participants’ own research interests to help motivate and position the fabulation. In the afternoon, there was an exhibition of the resulting fabulations including presentations from groups, and feedback from each other, aiming to relate and reflect on the produced fabulations. We focused on a cross-pollination of fabulations: how could these (not) co-exist in a future/alternative world? How do these fabulations speak into the current state of affairs? 

We ended up with a broader collective discussion of this workshop, guided through questions including: What have we made? How was the process/approach of fabulating? Such reflections also supported discussions around what will happen in the next Copenhagen workshop. Permeating both workshops so far were the questions: Am I now fabulating? What is fabulation and what is not, e.g. Is any materialization of suggesting an alternative to something, a form of fabulating?