Beyond and from below
Rehearsing reparative futures in the VR roleplays of Cao Fei and Ana María Millán
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9843687 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Astrid N Korporaal (0000-0002-8905-3576, Kingston University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 156 |
| Pages | 103301 |
| Publication date | 2024-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Futures (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0016-3287 • E-ISSN: 1873-6378 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.futures.2023.103301 |
| OpenAlex | W4389619538 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 16 |
The rise of virtual reality games, films and social experiences in recent years has been accompanied by the promise of simulating utopian futures. The visions they conjure include limitless options for opening, exploring, and expanding new worlds. However, these tropes reproduce settler-colonial attitudes to space, time, and civilizational progress. They project the militarized and consumerist roles of neoliberal western societies into the future, while hiding their negative effects across past and present environments. In this article, I ask whether virtual worlds can be used to connect users with reparative futures. Looking at artworks by Colombian artist Ana María Millán and Chinese artist Cao Fei, I discuss how they intervene into existing virtual landscapes and aesthetics to question their modes of co-creation. I argue that they combine recontextualization, roleplay and rehearsal as forms of reparative practice. They resist narratives of exceptional authorship and agency in favor of pluralized approaches to the future. Rather than supporting the gamified erasure of existing worlds, these works hold space for loss, memory, and survival. By redistributing responsibility for harm from below and imaginations beyond the horizon of dominant visibility, these practices approach reparative futures. • Virtual reality’s aesthetics and gameplay orient users towards a horizon of limitless new options. • The dominant framing of VR worlds separates material and imaginative dimensions of futurity. • Cao Fei’s VR works create dialogues between virtual consumption and physical forms of care via digital death and (re)birth. • Ana Maria Millán’s roleplays address subconscious power dynamics and challenge users to cooperate. • Millán and Fei’s works open a plurality of options to connect cultural memories and future imaginations
Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Art · Cyberspace · Futures contract · Literature · Media studies · Mill · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Rehearsing · Social science · Sociology · The Internet · Vision · Visual arts · Anthropology · Cinema and Media Studies · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Gender, Feminism, and Media · History · Law
A dual model of product involvement for effective virtual reality
The Paradox of Interactive Media
Feeling good about feeling bad
Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities
Reconsidering Reparations
Performing the Looking-Glass Self
The Future of the World
Thinking with heritage
Provincialising Futures Literacy
Colonizing the future
Potential History
Introduction
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |