Nijmegen, The Netherlands — Lindenberg Culture House
September 26–27, 2026
Reclaiming Our Futures is a two-day artistic–scientific festival bringing together scientists, artists, activists, and citizens to collectively reflect on and reimagine the worlds we want to inhabit. Taking place at the Lindenberg Culture House in Nijmegen on September 26–27, 2026, the festival will offer a safe and creative space for conversation, experimentation, and connection.
SATURDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2026
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 10.00-11.30 – Yellow Room
“AI utopia -the board game for resisting AI“ | Ajuna SOERJADI
_Game workshop_
“Congratulations! You’ve just been elected Prime Minister of Sinistrai. You are so excited to lead the AI revolution and guide your citizens toward AI utopia. What could possibly go wrong?”
Ajuna Soerjadi will present the board game AI Utopia, which was developed during the summer school Critical AI Literacies for resisting and reclaiming at Radboud University. It enables players to resist dominant AI hype narratives by playing from the perspective of a technofascist government and slowly watching the consequences of their decisions unfold. What began as the AI revolution turns into an entirely different revolution.
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 10.00-11.30 – Blue Room
“Why is AI so damn bad? How do we resist?“ | Craig RYDER
_Game workshop_
The problems associated with AI are extensive and existential: escalating unemployment and precarity, the erosion of cultural value, intensified political polarisation and widening social inequalities, and a significant role in accelerating climate change (Ho, 2025; Murgia, 2025). Worryingly, AI is a “gift to the far right” (McQuillan, 2025) because AI’s ability to surveil and classify populations, especially immigrants and asylum seekers, aligns with fascistic ideals of hierarchy and exclusion.
In response, a host of anti-AI groups are emerging. Stop Killer Robots (SKR) call for new international law on autonomy in weapons systems; PauseAI aim to halt the development of AI systems until sufficient regulatory frameworks are in place; STOP AI wants to permanently ban the development of super-human AI, and Algorithmic Justice League (AJL) campaign against AI bias. Whilst diverse, these groups are unified in their resistance to having social life organised by opaque computational systems that breach human rights, displace workers and devalue cultural production.
In this workshop we will role play as members of emerging anti-AI movements. We will prepare manifestos, envisage how our resistance will manifest, and challenge and collaborate with rival groups in order to reinforce and refine our missions. The goal is to develop a realistic action plan to engage in anti-AI activism after the workshop.
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 10.00-11.30 – Red Room
“Space, Time, and Connection in Improvised Music“ | Ornella NOULET & Egon WOLFSON
_Music workshop_
This participatory workshop explores conceptions of space and time in free Jazz music through the lineage of Rhythms and Awareness in improvisation.
[No musical background needed]
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 11.30-13.00 – Yellow Room
“This Is Not the Netherlands. Reimagining the Map of the Netherlands in a Participatory Maplab“ | Henk VAN HOUTUM
_Maplab workshop_
Where is the Netherlands? On a standard map, the answer appears straightforward: a thin border line encloses a clearly defined and seemingly homogeneous territory. Yet this dominant state-centric representation is a political fiction—a cartographic surreality that is actively produced through education, policy, and repetition. In doing so, it reinforces nativist imaginaries and an “Us here versus Them there” politics.
In reality, the Netherlands neither begins nor ends at the line on the map. Dutch society, economy, and culture are embedded in global, rhizomatic networks of people, goods, data, and ideas. Also border controls extend far beyond the territorial edge, operating through visas, databases, asylum procedures, detention centres, and everyday practices of exclusion and discrimination.
My book Free the Map is the methodological starting point of this Maplab. It challenges methodological nationalism by treating mapping as a contested and generative practice rather than a neutral act of representation. Building on this, we approach the Dutch border as a dynamic assemblage of connections, dependencies, and power relations that continuously produces both mobility and immobility.
Rather than accepting the standard map of the Netherlands as given, we will first discuss what this map renders visible, what it excludes and with what consequences. Next, participants are invited to redraw, distort, and reimagine the Netherlands from their own situated perspectives. The collective cartographic drawings do not aim to produce a single alternative map, but a multiplicity of situated mappings that unsettle the territorial frame and open space for other ways of seeing, relating, and imagining coexistence.
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 11.30-13.00 – Blue Room
“Imagining Futures, Challenging Imaginaries“ | Odile VALLÉE
_Fiction workshop_
Imagining Futures, Challenging Imaginaries is a participatory workshop that brings together participants to explore how we imagine societal transformation through speculative fiction. Rather than predicting the future, speculative fiction imagines alternative worlds to explore possible social, political, technological, and ecological transformations. In doing so, it offers a framework for questioning present assumptions, imagining alternative ways of living, and critically examining the relationships between imagination, power, and social change.
Used by artists, (science) fiction authors, designers, urban planners, futurists, and researchers, speculative fiction is a powerful medium for creating and activating imaginaries of change while reflecting on the ethical, political, and practical implications of ecological and social transitions. As, across oral, written, visual, and artistic forms, it enables experimentation with new ways of living, organizing, and inhabiting the world.
Structured as a sequence of participatory activities, the 90-minute workshop invites participants to collaboratively imagine possible futures before critically examining the assumptions embedded within them. It distinguishes between imaginaries – shared systems of images, assumptions, values, myths, affects, aesthetics, and possibilities that shape how we perceive, feel, and think about the future – and theories of change, the often implicit ideas about how those futures come into being. Through collaborative storytelling, participants reveal both the imaginaries their stories draw upon and the theories of change they enact. By making these visible and open to challenge, the workshop encourages participants to question dominant narratives, experiment with alternative theories of change, and reflect on how different imaginaries shape the futures we consider possible.
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 11.30-13.00 – Red Room
“Soundpainting“ | Bjørk SEMEY
_Music workshop_
Soundpainting is a technique developed by Walter Thompson: a live-composing sign language used by musicians to improvise together in different contexts. In this workshop we will use our voices together, learn some of the language of soundpainting and create spontaneous compositions in real-time.
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 14.30-16.00 – Yellow Room
“R is for refusal: a knowledge repair workshop“ | Evelyn WAN & George FLETCHER
_Interactional workshop_
The workshop departs from ‘Refusal’ and ‘Repair’, 2 R-words informed by black studies and decolonial research (”R-words: Refusing Research”, Tuck and Yang), in the context of technology and computation. It is co-hosted by Evelyn Wan (UU) and George Fletcher (TU/e), who share a desire to refuse the machine and its extractive logics.
‘Refusal’ has been an operant keyword in our research and praxis, layered through practices of data refusal, digital disconnection, withdrawal, fugitivity, and ‘consent not to be a single being’ (Glissant/ Moten). In the workshop, we establish a shared starting point through examining the concept of ‘refusal’ in reference to our research. We then collectively chart pathways from refusal towards re-pair, through a slow dialogue outside of productive time. Repair, in our definition, does not only refer to mending wounds of technological extraction and exploitation, but also to re-pairing our divergent lines of thoughts and practices, as exemplified by the literal coming-together of our two disciplines of ‘media and performance studies’ and ‘computer science’.
Between the hard rationality of STEM and the poetics of humanistic approaches, we re-pair the cognitive and theoretical with the affective and experiential, and integrate what often remains abstract conceptual discussions into the somatic and relational fabrics of our daily life.
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 14.30-16.00 – Blue Room
“Warm Data Lab: Thinking Transcontextually in a Rhizomatic World“ | Cinthe LEMMENS & the METALOOG
_Interactional workshop_
This workshop invites festival participants into a Warm Data Lab —an embodied, group-based practice that translates complexity science into lived experience. Developed by Nora Bateson and the International Bateson Institute, it explores a shared question, such as What is family, or home, in a changing society?, through the many contexts that shape our lives: nature, economy, technology, art, health, and more.
Over roughly 90 minutes, participants move through small, continually shifting groups, sharing personal stories rather than debating toward consensus. As the composition of each group changes, stories spread and branch across the whole room. The Lab is hosted by facilitators from METALOOG, a knowledge network for systemic practice; no prior experience is required.
This is transcontextual thinking in action, and it grows rhizomatically —horizontally, through multiplicity and relation rather than subordination. There is no fixed centre and no predetermined solution, only a living web of perception that branches unpredictably when, as Bateson observes, “your story changes my story.”
The Lab offers a felt encounter with the pluriversal, interconnected futures the festival imagines.
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 14.30-16.00 – Red Room
“Special moments at school“ | Joséphine REMON & Sophie NECKER
_Game workshop_
Our workshop focuses on the experience of being at school. Together with an illustrator, we created 20 cards, illustrated “special moments” at school. These moments were shared with us by school kids when we asked them what their special moment was. The kids’ text is on one side of the card, the illustration on the other side.
our workshop focuses on micro-stories and micro-happenings that would normally be overlooked. They shed light on parallel forms of being at school, what really counts for the kids. During the workshop, we ask participants to imagine what the story behind the illustration is. The text is hidden. What are the characteristics of the situation that made it special? Then we turn the card around; we discuss what we had imagined.
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 16.00-17.30 – Yellow Room
“Building a common future: co-playing, community, and dialogue“ | Yanis RATBI
_Game workshop_
Through building a collective futuristic place in a construction game, experience how playing video games together can create bonds and make room for community building and social and political exchanges.
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 16.00-17.30 – Blue Room
“Decolonise your practice — in practice“ | Iris PAJUNEN
_Craft workshop_
Try out decolonising methods in practice, and adapt them to your own project, research, or passion. In this skills-sharing session you will learn concrete tools for locating power imbalances, barriers to access, and chains of profit — and ways of dismantling them. You will experiment with alternative modes of presenting, such as zines, storytelling, art, or theatre. You will leave with food for thought and action.
Decolonial theory and methods emphasise reciprocity, responsibility, marginalised voices, agency, and self-reflection. Decolonial knowledge production not only critiques unequal power structures, but also facilitates positive change, collective healing, and political imaginations. Decolonising our practices contributes to wider real-world impact, community and stakeholder outreach, social justice agendas, and protest against the norms and hierarchies of expertise and knowledge.
The workshop is based on lessons learned from the Decolonial Solidarity Collection for Palestine project, which documents the Palestinian community and solidarity movement in Finland. The project consists of three outputs mixing research, art, and activism: a zine, a photography exhibition, and a theatre production, all led by Finnish-Palestinians. From the river to the sea, Palestine will set us all free.
(The session is beginner-friendly and open to all; you don’t need to be an artist. There is room for group commentary, but no compulsion to showcase what you create. Remember, feeling awkward or unsure is part of deconstructing dominant thinking and learning new ways of working. Been there, done that.)
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 16.00-17.30 – Red Room
“Zines as punk expression“ | Constanza LOBOS CAMPUSANO & Talin DE JEU
_Craft workshop_
Street violence, as well as other forms of violence that affect those at intersections of identity, connect everyday experiences with structures of oppression in regard to gender, race, class, sexuality, and disability. Structural inequality engenders violence on the street as well as limits language available for understanding and processing it. Zines, as punk expression, are a non-conforming creative form that invites critique on prevailing modes of thought (Guerra & Pereira Alberto 172). Similar to rhizomes, zines are created in a non-linear, non-hierarchical, communal way.
In this workshop, we will think through experiences of street violence, using the medium of zines. In small groups, collective zines are made to showcase the diversity in street violence (such as racial profiling, catcalling, non-accessible streets, hostile architecture), as well as understand these forms of violence in relation to each other, as structures of oppression. By introducing the workshop with a brief theoretical background on zines as a mode of thought and expression, we sketch the limits of ‘traditional’ forms of art and how zines pick up the stitch to move beyond those limits.
Together, we will explore the space of the non-explainable, non-verbal, non-sharable violence in the public sphere.
Saturday 26 September 2026 – 18.00-19.30 – Karolingenzaal
RIZOM Xprmntl 4tet
_Jazz Concert_
The RIZOM Xperimental 4tet will make you reconsider everything you think you know about jazz.
Formation:
Benjamin FACONNIER – trumpet
Ornella NOULET – Tenor Saxophone
Bjørk SEMEY – Double Bass
Egon WOLFSON – Drums
SUNDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2026
Sunday 27 September 2026 – 10.30-12.30 – Yellow room
“Cadavre Exquis: Rhizomatic music-making“ | Benjamin FACONNIER
_Music workshop_
The “cadavre exquis” is a practice invented in Paris in 1925 by Surrealists such as Jacques Prévert, Yves Tanguy, and André Breton. Originally conceived as a game played through writing or drawing, it involves several people collaborating to create a sentence or a drawing, without any of the participants knowing in advance the content of the previous contribution.
Here, we will explore this practice in music-making through the experimental, collaborative, and horizontal co-creation of a unique piece.
=》4 participants at a time, wearing individual headphones connected to an audio interface, will be invited to contribute different elements of the piece (rhythm, melody, samples, etc.)
No musical background required, as you will be guided by the host.
Sunday 27 September 2026 – 10.30-12.30 – Blue Room
“Reclaiming public representations of AI“ | Joost VOSSERS & Marcela SUAREZ
_Craft workshop_
We propose a workshop as a critical AI literacy session for the collaborative creation of situated social depictions of AI. We take inspiration from Better Images of AI, an online project and repository of imagery that realistically portrays the technology and the infrastructures, territories, resources, and social relations sustaining it.
In the workshop, participants are introduced to the “Better Images of AI” project through the analysis of two sample images. Through a critical discussion of the imbrications between modernity/coloniality, digitality/materiality and systems of oppression by the organizers, participants will reclaim public representations of AI beyond binary thinking as a way to decolonize both our future and public representations of AI.
The images can be constructed digitally through e.g. image manipulation (without generative AI!) or analogically with e.g. (news)papers or magazines. At the end of the workshop, participants will present their images and share their reflection on reclaiming our futures. The work can contribute to the “Better Images of AI” image library and will make space for participants to reclaim public representations of AI.
Resources:
Better Images of AI
Critical AI Literacy (CAIL) project page
Joost Vossers Profile Page
Marcela Suarez Profile Page.
Sunday 27 September 2026 – 10.30-12.30 – Red room
“Giving voice to rage“ | Inge STOK
_Performance workshop_
This workshop will feature Embodied, theatrical, and vocal exercises to connect you to your anger and rage.
Sunday 27 September 2026 – 10.30-12.30 – Karolingenzaal
“Rhythms of Resistance“ | Marieke WOENSDREGT & ‘Rhythms of Resistance’ members
_Music workshop_
Rhythms of Resistance (RoR) is an international network of activist drumming/percussion bands. We drum at demonstrations, protests, civil disobedience actions, etc. that fit our principles. We are a transnational, anti-hierarchical, anticapitalist, antisexist and antiracist network fighting for social and ecological justice. We are activists using tactical frivolity as a form of political action to confront any system of domination.
Come drum with us! This workshop is open to all participants of the festival who share our principles. The workshop will be very beginner-friendly; no prior musical experience is needed. Come join us! We have everything to play for!
Here’s a video To get a taste of what we do:
Sunday 27 September 2026 – 14.00-16.00 – Yellow Room
“Riot Residue“ | Soma BASU
_VR Experience_
Directed by Soma BASU and Nihal KUMAR
Duration: 25 minutes
Language: Hindi, with English subtitles
Riot Residue is a 360° VR film that returns to Northeast Delhi and culminates from Soma Basu’s doctoral research and sensory ethnography of the riot-affected areas. The film stays with what remains in ordinary places, including drains, gates, rooms, lanes, thresholds, phones, breath, and silence.
Using still and moving immersive scenes, along with fragments of earlier interview voices, the film lets testimony return through sound, hesitation, memory, and atmosphere. No participants appear on camera. Viewers are invited to listen before they look, to turn slowly, and to sense how violence continues to inhabit everyday space after the event is said to be over.
Riot Residue is a film about return, residue, and the quiet ways violence remains present.
Sunday 27 September 2026 – 14.00-16.00 – Blue Room
“Hum Dekhenge: Counter-Archives as Empathy Infrastructure“ | Suman GHOSH
_VR Experience_
Counter-Archives as Empathy Infrastructures is an immersive virtual museum that explores how protest art can preserve public memory after a protest site has disappeared or become difficult to access. The work uses materials from the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in India as a case study for thinking about protest, memory, and participation in virtual space.
The museum brings together protest artworks, photographs, videos, testimonies, and community-generated material inside a virtual environment. It asks how viewers encounter political images when they are removed from the street and placed inside an immersive museum.
The project questions the idea that virtual reality automatically produces empathy. It treats empathy as a slower process shaped by attention, interpretation, and the act of witnessing. The museum becomes a space where protest art can be revisited, remembered, and encountered by people who were not physically present at the original events.
Sunday 27 September 2026 – 14.00-16.00 – Red Room
“Prototype Replica: Recycling Past Futures of Information Technology, Relocating ‘Speculative Design’ in Its Material Specifics“ | Philippe Sormani
_Demonstration_
Prototype Replica: Recycling Past Futures of Information Technology, Relocating ‘Speculative Design’ in Its Material Specifics by Working Out the Combinatorial Logic of Twenty-Five Key Ideas Together.
Sunday 27 September 2026 – 14.00-16.00 – Karolingenzaal
Screenings
_A Selection of Artistic / Scientific short films_
This screening session brings together five short films exploring questions of identity, Transmission, migration, oppression, Liberation, memory, and our multilayered relationships with each other and the worlds we inhabit. Through both artistic and scientific modes of inquiry, the selected works use film as a space for critical reflection, situated storytelling, bold experimentation, and imagining otherwise. Together, they invite us to consider how we experience, resist, and transform our social worlds.
“Odamado” _ Emilien Dubuc
“man and… his world” _ Jahanzeb Haroon
“Migrant Bodies: From Oppression to Emancipation” _ Samira Ibnelkaïd & Benjamin Faconnier
“Portrait at 19” _ Ojo Taiye
“The True Mirror: Melisa” _ Sibel özașir Kaçar
An event coordinated by Samira Ibnelkaïd,
Futures of Language Project, Radboud University.
Funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences KNAW Trailblazers Fund.