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Attending "Futures from the Margins" SFRA 2022 conference in Oslo, Norway was like a dream conference literally. Waking up at midnight and listening to talks till 7 or 9 AM while half asleep was arduous but worth it. From contemporary Chinese Science Fiction to African Futurism, speculative video games, Buddhist Futurism, Norwegian SF, Visionary SF, Queer worldbuilding, speculative fiction from Bengal, disability in SF, Indian SF, cine Mexicana y ciencia ficcion, Religious Futurisms, Climaginaries, and on and on. The international SF world is incredible. I have a list of books and videos I need to read and see now. The one featured documentary at the conference is something I hope eventually to see in completion - Bangla Kalpavigyan and Indian science fiction as it explore what is Bangla SF and Indian SF as well as utopian speculative works. Here's just a few screenshots of one talk that had me wanting to understand what was climaginaries.     The artwork, titled Home in the Nuclear Winter (2022), uses motifs from Ant Network Theory (2019), a speculative piece by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay and Geoffrey C. Bowker. The Cultural Studies Association Conference in Chicago was less of a time travel jump which was helpful for me since I was zoom hosting a session. This conference was themed "Reckoning(s)" had talks discussing climate justice movements, global injustices, social movements, neo colonialism, cosmo(s)politics in science fiction worlds. Here are a few more SF themed excerpts from conference program.   |
