Day 03. Activating Global Futures
HUM 2035- Speculations on the Future of Humanitarian Work in South Asia
Wednesday June 23, 12:00pm EDT
🎧 Talk, 30 minute session
In early 2019, the Barbican Centre, London commissioned Quicksand and Tandem Research to develop a public exhibition about the future of humanitarian work. The key inquiry was about how humanitarian aid will transform and adapt in the face of catastrophic global change. Told from the perspective of HUM, a fictional humanitarian aid network founded in 2020, the exhibit comprised of its origin story, its trajectory in the coming years, and also the story of HUM-affiliated humanitarian workers dealing with the aftermath of a fictional storm ‘Lata’ which hit Goa, India in 2035. Here is the vision statement for HUM- ‘HUM is a South Asian humanitarian initiative created to lend analytical and operational insight to humanitarian work happening in the region. Our practice has found its base in India, given the country’s vulnerabilities and foreseeable challenges as a regional focal point and source of conflicts. This shift towards rethinking emergency relief and its longer term impact on communities was starting to become noticeable by 2019, and it is in this context that HUM was created.’ Our secondary research and expert interviews pointed towards the increasingly complex nature of humanitarian relief work globally and the multiple tensions it carries in terms of geo-political forces and power inequities. Building on American speculative fiction author William Gibson’s quote, “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed”, we leveraged speculative design to present emerging trends and humanitarian practices from the global south alongside counter-narratives of fictional stakeholders– communities, families, and citizens.’.
The exhibit was created by Quicksand in partnership with STBY and was first displayed in May 2019 at the Barbican Life Rewired Hub in London. Following that, Quicksand was approached by the Innovation Team at MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) to utilise speculative design to help facilitate internal conversations around transforming their institutional architecture. At the co-creation workshops we’ve facilitated with MSF in New Delhi, Amsterdam and Barcelona, we have leveraged the speculation process for vision alignment and collectivising opinion of MSFers from different parts of the world. For the talk at PRIMER, 2020 we’re presently working towards incorporating the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic in India into the HUM.2035 genesis. As an unprecedented event, it has not only triggered mass migrations and unemployment, but also resulted in deepening socio-economic inequalities and inconsistent access to basic resources, in the short to medium term. Told from the point of view of a digital epidemiologist as a humanitarian worker, we shall present stories that capture the interplay of climate events, social inequity, public private partnership, civil society engagement, as well as surveillance technologies, that are mobilised in the interest of communities ‘in need’.
Avinash Kumar
Co-founder and Partner, Quicksand
Avinash Kumar is a co-founder and partner in Quicksand, and his work spans two decades of interdisciplinary research, practice and entrepreneurship. Founded in 2005, Quicksand works with global corporations to envisage new business opportunities, with international development partners to drive social impact through innovation, and incubates art and cultural projects through open platforms for research and public engagement. With a background in product and game design, Avinash leads the creative development and new media practice at Quicksand. In recent years, he has anchored projects focused on design research for public health and social impact with clients that include the Barbican Centre, Wellcome Trust, MSF, etc..
With a natural inclination to build entrepreneurial projects in the arts and design, he has incubated several arts and media based future-facing projects, collectives and platforms in India. He is the director of Antariksha Sanchar - an Indian cultural sci-fi video game and classical dance opera, curator for EyeMyth Media Arts Festival and Future Fiction - a platform for storytelling futures. Avinash also co-founded the award-winning electronica dance music collective BLOT and has been featured extensively in press over the past decade. He has presented his work at numerous academic events and institutions such as the Design Academy Eindhoven, RightsCon Tunis, etc.
Siddharth Khajuria
Senior Producer (Incubator & Level G), Barbican
Siddharth Khajuria is a senior producer at the Barbican, a Brutalist arts centre in the City of London which is home to a concert hall, two theatres, three cinemas and two galleries. He works to develop and deliver a cross-arts programme of talks, events, installations, residencies and research projects - with a focus on exploring the Barbican’s spaces as a site for convening conversation and facilitating unexpected arts and social experiences. Siddharth joined the Barbican in 2012, soon after which he produced ‘Hack the Barbican’, a chaotic four-week takeover of the Centre’s public spaces by a self-organised community of 300 people with no central curation. He used to be a producer at the BBC, which he joined as a graduate trainee in 2008. His work at the UK broadcaster included: undercover investigations at Watchdog, producing segments for Woman’s Hour, and event producing the BBC’s activity at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Siddharth's from London and studied history.