One science-fiction writer whose impact is growing is Octavia Butler, who was one of the first Black female science fiction writers ever to be published (starting in the 1970s). The commonality between all these is the idea of speculation: asking ourselves ‘what if?’ While this form of fiction has been around for millenia and includes the likes of Mary Shelley, Orson Wells, or Margaret Atwood, recent themes are increasingly concerned with climate related disasters, dystopian technological futures and post humanism. There is currently an explosion of what is called Speculative fiction, in literature and film, which can be anything from fantasy, horror, and science fiction, to post-apocalyptic fiction and magic realism. Scholar Albert Murray said that it is the artist who first comes to realise when the time is out of joint, “t is he who determines the extent and gravity of the current human predicament, who in effect discovers and describes the hidden elements of destruction, sounds the alarm, and even designates the targets.” Why is it important to imagine the future? If we can develop the skills to imagine a future different from what we have, we may perhaps get away from the limiting but paralysing state of mind which tells us that nothing will ever change. They might therefore imagine what may come of our actions - or inactions and, in this way, their work can serve as a sort of warning. Hermann Hesse said great poets don’t provide ready-made duties or doctrines for the future, rather they “feel into the future with the most sensitive antennas, and live out ahead of us, a piece of future development, and yet unrealised potential.” Because artists tend to be nonconformists, operating from the margins, with different perspectives, they also see patterns and make connections that we are too busy to notice. Imagination helps us think of a future far beyond what we already know. When we think of what the future might look like, most of us do this by relying on our past: what we know and what we have experienced. When we speak of the artist as visionary we do not mean that they predict the future, rather that with the tool of imagination, they are able to draw futures beyond what many of us think possible. ![]() ![]() ![]() In this piece, we explore the artist’s role in relation to the future – this is the artist as visionary (and despite what google might tell you, it has nothing to do with visionary art, but, by all means, have a look!). Our earlier pieces explored the artist’s role in helping us shape complex emotions, reveal truths, and contribute to democracy. In this final piece in our series on the role of the artist – and our final piece for this year – we travel forwards.
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