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How can we meet the complex challenges of our future? How can we make them tangible? What could our future(s) look like? - In a wood workshop we built several objects and tried to find out how future visions for an eco-social change can be addressed and reconfigured through making.

The workshop was preceded by the observation, that many maker communities are directed by the matter of future.  Here, future is perceived as a dangerous accumulation of crises that impose an overwhelming complexity. Thus, the specific way of dealing with uncertainty in making is particularly interesting. We can observe, that through tinkering and with a hands-on mentality maker communities create all kinds of prototypes, like compost toilets, wind turbines, and tiny houses. The visionary concepts often present well-intentioned "ready-made futures". They promise to create social added value and social responsibility, but tend to limit the idea of "changing the world" to the late-modern heuristics of consumption and growth. The participatory workshop was about exploring this inherent impasse in a practical way and making the complex uncertainty tangible.


The participants sketched and crafted sitting furniture in the tradition of popular DIY designs (references included Enzo Mari's Sedia Uno or Van Bo Le Mentzel's 24-Euro-Chair). In their designs, the participants were to formulate a personal stance towards future issues, such as the climate crisis, poverty among the elderly, the Corona pandemic, etc. By the end of the day, six different positions emerged. In their engagement with the topics, materiality and their own know-how, the participants developed individual proposals that counter the dominant narratives of "ready-made futures" with a situated, practical knowledge of the future.