zfaust
Living a Speculative Life?
Part of this package also includes a set of printed materials, presentations, and a website to serve as a primer before the students receive the box. As with everything we make for students, every activity begins with a question.
I left my review with my advisor feeling positive. Walking through Chinatown replaying the question, “What life do I want to imagine living for the next few weeks?”
After a month of dealing with incompetent bureaucracy, impending doom, and neverending negligence from our landlord (and management company) I feel disinfrancised by living in New York. I was once proud to be able to navigate any issue, any problem, and any weird stranger while achieving whatever task I set my mind to that day. But day after day of dealing with this vacate order has me feeling beaten and strung alone by the decisions of things I have no control over.
While talking with my advisor we get on the topic of speculative design. Inbetween sips of our coffees she describes an activity she did with her undergrad class in which they used a speculaltive prompt to kick-off their next project. I think I reminisce about missing the speculative incubator that undergrad was for me, and she suggests that maybe as way to take focus away from the apartment drama, and being stuck in a situation that will inevitably end, it might be useful to apply a similar logic to my next packet, or even my life, as the show plays out.
I loved the idea. As someone who is a constant daydreamer, I thought I’d have no issue creating the fantasy. I knew I already thought about moving out West, leaving the museum, and potentially taking up odd jobs again. I was just waiting for the right spark. Although I couldn’t leave quite yet, there felt like there’s so much fun and room for opportunity to at least live and work in the mindset as if I was moving out of Manhattan tomorrow.
While walking back to the subway images of California, the desert, and being an artist, teacher, and naturalist play on repeat in mind. I’m eager to get home to create a few vision boards with the saved inspirational images on my laptop. So eager I’m clueless to the fact I circle the same block several times before noticing the subway station.
As soon as I get home I compile several boards. I stand up, admire my work, move a photo, and repeat. Remembering I’m still on the clock at the museum I add in another step to my process that includes the work I’m obligated to finish that day. Moodboard, museum, repeat.
With each board I imagine a different life. One in the middle of the High Desert surrounded by nothing but the earth and my thoughts. Free from the distractions of the modern world and able to take a moment to breathe.
Another by the water. Maybe I’d quit my job and rely on odd jobs like farming for oysters, making weird knick knacks for tourists, or running a bed and breakfast. Nothing I currently have the skills to do, but eager to shed my skin as a designer in favor for something more mundane.
And lastly I envision a life in the burbs, preferably close to our families. A life of Sunday dinners with parents, a fenced-in yard with a garden, and the repetition of a simpler, quieter life than the one we live now in Manhattan.
All very enticing, and all desirable. But all so different enough that they cannot merge together. Unable to decide in the moment which route I wish to take I think of the actions associated with each potential lifestyle. What could I realistically LARP in the moment right now?
In that moment I think about the message from How Modern Media Destroyed Our Minds, the cure for a lot of this is getting a life, not a lifestyle.
Caught up in the speculation, the potential, I forgot that the most important part in all of this is to actually spend time in implementing this. I can think, plan, and envision as much as I want, but it’s all useless without applying it.
I think that’s a big reason I developed this site. To get the idea out of my head, and to use this as a sort of tool to help me just live. Being conscious of the life is important, but getting caught up in the actions is more significant.
In a weird way, the activity did what it needed to, and it inspired me more than I thought it would. I know the life I want to live. I’m, for the most part, living it. And maybe speculating is a part of the life I enjoy living, and maybe this site is a good home to ask the speculative questions to see how life (my life) could change with all the new, and old information I become conscious of.