The Imaginary Institute doesn’t exist. Yet.
We invite collaborators from all disciplines to join us in creating a free-thinking laboratory for transdisciplinary research and collaboration. The core theme of collective transdisciplinary imagination will be explored through play and the systems' perspective, together with the arts, sciences and other collective practices.
The project is initiated by the ArtScience Department and Systems At Play at the Center Leo Apostel for Transdisciplinary Studies (CLEA) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), in collaboration with Science of Singularities, (plus other partners to be confirmed*).
This pilot project will run over 8 months, from November 2024 to June 2025, with a series of 2-day in-person symposiums held each month in Brussels, culminating in a final public symposium or festival in Summer 2025 (location to be determined).
Please note: This is an ‘open’ open-call. This means that the open call is still open to feedback, suggestions, revisions and additions, before it officially opens. We do this to make the process more open-ended and inclusive of potential partners and collaborators.
At the bottom of this page you can find indications of how you or your institution can potentially be involved.
Key Objectives of II:
PLAY
- Play is a principal methodology, ethos, and topic of the II. By play, we literally mean playing. We also suggest it is an attitude; whimsy, joyfulness; a playful approach; something simultaneously serious and not serious; trying things out; ‘What if?..’; reconfiguring and rearranging things, ideas and relationships; being, doing and perceiving something relational.
- Play underpins creative processes across many disciplines. There is little difference, for example, between art and science at the early stages of ideation.
- Play is isomorphic to the systems perspective
TRANSDISCIPLINARITY
- New ideas are often reached through novel, speculative, unlikely, unexpected collisions and synergies between different areas of knowledge and practice.
- The II views the plurality of disciplines and practices as mutually beneficial and recombinable technologies of perception.
- No individual discipline is privileged over another; instead, they are allowed to play freely together.
FREE-THINKING LABORATORY
- The Imaginary Institute is a vital, free, playful space for fundamental transdisciplinary research.
- II utilises play, art and speculation as vehicles to legitimize and enable unconventional thinking.
- II is ‘safe-space’ to try out all kinds of ideas away from the fear of being judged and the ‘publish or perish’ pressures of academia, which doesn’t always encourage unconventional and open-ended exploration.
- II believes that the world needs more places where different world-views can freely meet, play together, where crazy, wild thinking can be explored.
- II embraces risk, failure, as well as both brilliant and stupid ideas, and the people that have them.
SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE
- Systems perspective is a shorthand to include complexity science, social complexity, complex adaptive systems, cybernetics, self-organisation, systems theory, emergence, interaction theory, connectionism, and relational ontologies.
- The systems perspective is a broad and vital toolkit of concepts directly relevant to many different fields of study including, AI, art, biology, physics, philosophy, play and games design, and collective, distributed, and more-than-human intelligence.
THE IMAGINARY
- The Imaginary Institute of Interdisciplinary Imagination is intended as a playful title to ignite humour, wonder, curiosity and imagination.
- By imaginary we refer to an act of pure play, and to our social imaginaries, i.e. our collective imagination and intelligence.
- The Imaginary Institute is itself imagined as a collective form of play and may be thought of as a hyperstition. A term coined by the Cybernetic Cultures Research Unit (CCRU) indicating the cybernetic feedback between the fictional and the real. When we collectively believe in and act upon an idea, we bring it into existence with real-world consequences.
- The Imaginary Institute is not just a conceptual exercise, but a free and open space between us where we can play with reality together.
Practicalities:
HOW IT COULD WORK:
Members will collaborate to bring the Imaginary Institute into being. During an 8-month period (November 2024 - June 2025), participants will meet each month for a two-day symposium. During each two-day meeting, participants form a new collaboration with a different participant based upon their mutual interests, research and the core themes of the II. The duration of these collaborations may span from 1 day to several months. This will be determined and negotiated by those involved. The process and results of these collaborations will be shared during the II meetings.
Day 1: Groups present the results of their collaboration, with group discussion and feedback.
Day 2: Self-organised collective activity.
In the (approx) 4-week gap between each symposia, participants self-organise online or off-line to work on collaborations and collectively decide upon the structure and content of the next symposia. It is entirely up to the participants to decide the creative focus and the practical outcome of their collaborations.
The outcome may take any form, provided it is transdisciplinary. This could Include:
- Written texts
- Artworks
- Performances
- Games
- Anything that can be imagined
Collaborations could potentially also take the form of meta-exercises by focusing on the themes of II. For instance:
- Exploring the practical and theoretical intersection of play and the systems perspective
- Develop practical collective transdisciplinary methodologies, and experimental modes of collective intelligence.
- Collective experiences for other members of II and a wider public
- Developing new structures and protocols for the II
PROPOSED TIMELINE:
Applications open: October 1
Applications close: October 15
Start date: November, 2024 (exact date TBC)
End date: June , 2025 (exact date TBC)
Exact dates of the 8 symposia and the final event TBD
APPLICATION CRITERIA:
Eligibility for the project will be dependent on the following criteria:
- Participant availability: Participants must be physically present in Brussels for a minimum of 6 of the 8 two-day symposia. They will also need to set aside time to prepare the collaborations in-between the symposia. The amount of time may vary between participants
- Participant suitability: Participants will be selected based on their suitability for the program regarding how their work relates to that of the other participants.
- Willingness to collaborate
- Ability to play
COST:
We will ask a contribution from each member to cover costs.
The amount will be determined before the open call officially opens.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
CLEA has an established background as a space of free-thinking transdisciplinary research since 1995, with a particular focus on cybernetics, the systems perspective, global brain and noosphere, quantum theory, philosophy of science, evolution and cognition, collective intelligence, complexity education, and Artscience. The Imaginary Institute series continues and extends the work and ideas CLEA started in 2023 with Systems At Play and the Self-Organising Symposium on Self-Organisation.
For more information about CLEA and the ArtScience group:
https://clea.research.vub.be/research/artscience
ENGAGEMENT:
Are you interested in being involved in the Imaginary Institute? Would you like to support the Imaginary Institute? Would you like to be kept informed about the progress and future public activities of the Imaginary Institute? If so, please fill out this form.
If you would like to engage in a conversation or give feedback and suggestions in relation to this ‘open’ open call, you are very welcome to write to us. Additionally, the contents of this page are also available in a google doc, which is available for you to add comments.
Google Docs working document
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XLOhKYe08dCoRDJsSErjPctfMxLovcpJ0Ht7PgfdNfs/edit?usp=sharing
CONTACT:
For more information, email:
orion.maxted@vub.be