I have been involved in various groups and projects related to speculative fiction and imagining the future through the use of interactive events and narrative change.
While I was working as a data ethics community organizer, I was invited to join speculative fiction lunches at Civic Hall and attend joint Forum co-hosted by Narrative Initiative that invited artists, technologists, activists and other creators to examine and share technologies for narrative change. I am part of an audio series by SciFi House on Imagining the Future, where I discuss the possibility that narrative can be used to influence how technologists view their role in creating the future — opening the idea that technologies require thinking about building for many people and safeguarding human rights.
My interactions with technologists through community organizing around tech ethics led to the creation of the Folded Futures Project, as way to merge art, imagination and tech ethics. I’ve also spoken about movement building, narrative and technology on podcasts and at conferences.
I developed and proposed an experimental workshop on thinking through how children’s stories and characters influence the ways we view our roles in responding to future challenges, such as climate change, at the Code+Libraries ‘un-conference‘ at EyeO 2019. I further developed this workshop at the XCHC Markerspace, and have infused narrative change into JEDI (Justice, Equity, Decolonization, Inclusion) workshops for scientists, researchers and decision makers in pandemic response.
In my current role, I am exploring more equitable and inclusive pandemic response by asking speculative epidemiological modeling questions. For example, many decisions are made around optimizing hospital capacity, and models are built around that defined — but limited — need. I am exploring which models could be built if we centered marginalized populations, such as incarcerated people or wage-poor essential workers, in the modeling and related data-guided policy decisions.
Before I knew the language around speculative fiction and narrative change, I wrote and experimented with challenging the predicted path through an “Unpredict” newsletter, where I recently announced “A Collection of Speculative Artifacts,” an exploration into sociological, psychological and political meanings of essential. I used this project as a way to people — including myself! — to explore other creative possibilities in every day life. This may include taking a different route home from work, saying yes to bachata in the park, or drawing a wild interpretation of the sun. Alongside that, I had a brief video project about traveling and riding bikes sola in an effort to understand non-dominant narratives for being an outdoors woman, which often center around being either a novice or uniquely expert. This allowed me to re-imagine myself as the protagonist in my own outdoors story, giving me freedom from limiting myself to cultural stories imposed on my self-perception.
One of my earliest memories of the power of narrative change were bedtime stories that my father used to create about a young dinosaur named Maia, who used math and teamwork to get out of tricky situations. He made up these stories because he wanted me to have role models who were not (yet) written about in children’s books.
Folded Futures Story
Contributions:
Writing – Mo Johnson-León, Lilian Huang
Web design – Margeaux
Graphic Design – Matthew Gotth-Olsen
Community organizing – Mo Johnson-León
Speculative Futures Writing Workshop
In November 2019, I joined a research group focused on building an equitable, inclusive multistakeholder community in Christchurch, New Zealand. As part of that experience, I hosted an iteration of my speculative futures writing workshop where we explored values, ethics and stories told in an imagined future world. Participants were supported in generating prompts, switching ideas and then writing stories that they shared and discussed.
I am especially grateful to the Muslim and Maori community members who supported this work.
Unpredict (because imagination is greater than prediction)
Unpredict is a series of interactive and explorative invitations to take a step back from the routine, to break patterns or experiment in low-pressure ways. The pre-2020 archive has a focus on outdoors experiences, travel and challenging self-perception. Letters and posts from 2020 and beyond can be found on Substack, and incorporate more themes from research, art and society.
How do I describe unpredicted experiences?
2021: “In many ways, even though things have been unpredictable the past 2-3 years, my life has been driven by a hyperfocus on predicting, forecasting, controlling and adapting with tensed shoulders. I don’t want to return to the normal that led to whatever we have all collectively experienced the past years+ but I do want to create and think about a future that is different. We’ll see where that takes me and all of us, together.”
2018: “In my mind, unpredict is the process of creating an intentional unplanned experience. It allows me to ask, “ What could I do differently?” — and this idea prepares me to say yes to opportunities and offers such as “Wanna go see a [marvelous thing in nature]?”. The moment I say yes, I’ve stepped into the practice of creating possibilities for myself — to see something unique, or connect with a friend, or learn something fascinating — and this occurs within the structure of my existing life.”
As part of this exploration, I filmed a short series that explored the narratives of women who traveled sola, through my own experiences. Other videos can be found here.