Unwired Currents—Imagining Technologies Otherwise

Unwired Currents—Imagining Technologies Otherwise was:

A six-month free online public program of keynotes, tutorials, panel discussions, and gatherings running from May to October 2025.

A fully-funded, six-month online fellowship for participants from diverse disciplinary and cultural backgrounds to envision technologies beyond dominant narratives. The open call in November 2024 invited designers, scientists, artists, coders, educators, and more to research and develop their own narratives as texts and mini-projects—such as a podcast episode, visual essay, short movie, or any other artistic or designerly utterance.

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Western societies have perpetuated the myth that machinery and technical systems are neutral, objective tools, equating technological advancement with societal progress. This dominant discourse promotes a universalist vision of “the future” that reinforces modernist ideals and solutionist approaches to pressing, complex social issues. As a result, many technological developments not only fail to address but often exacerbate inequalities rooted in ableism, classism, cis-hetero-patriarchy, and racism.

The Unwired Currents open program and fellowship brought together diverse perspectives from fields such as anthropology, history, and philosophy to art, design, coding, and activism to explore technologies beyond dominant narratives and delve into Indigenous knowledges, ancestral ways of making and being, and community-based practices.

The program was co-created by the think & do tank Dezentrum and Futuress, along with the transnational collective Dreaming Beyond AI, designer and researcher Franca López Barbera, and the anti-educational platform Materia Oscura.

Overview

Open program:

• Start: May 2025
• End: October 2025
• 8 free online keynotes, roundtable discussions, tutorials, and exchange-based gatherings available via Zoom and as recordings via Vimeo
• Language: English with close-captions

Fellowship:

• Start: May 2025
• End: October 2025
• 7 online sessions in small groups with fellowship mentors as well as individual work time on the project
• Different days and time-zones available
• Access to the Futuress Slack with a transnational community of feminist creatives, thinkers, and activists
• Honorary of 2000 CHF gross per fellow for research, writing, production, and publishing
• Applications for the fellowship have been closed

Open program

This free online lecture series brought together artists, researchers, and activists from all over the world to explore radical, community-centered, and non-Western approaches to technology. From decolonial design and data healing to rural futurisms and cosmo-technics, our speakers introduced different perspectives and new ways of relating to technology—ones that are rooted in relationality, informed by ancestral knowledge, and grounded in collective survival.

The lecture series and tutorial have been curated by Valentina Alcalde Gómez and Adriana Palencia from the Latin American platform Matería Oscura, alongside Maya Ober from Futuress. The workshop has been curated by Ramona Sprenger and Jeannie Schneider from the Dezentrum think & do tank.

Fellowship

The Unwired Currents—Imagining Technologies Otherwise fellowship is a collaborative learning community focused on crafting independent narratives. 

From May to October 2025, six participants from diverse fields researched and developed their own narratives through anthropological and feminist storytelling methods. In monthly online group mentoring sessions, the four fellowship mentors, Franca López Barbera, Iyo Bisseck, Mio Kojima, and Nushin Yazdani, guided the fellows in conducting research, crafting their text, and developing a mini-project. Each text and mini-project will be published on dreamingbeyond.ai and futuress.org.

Applications for the fellowship have been closed.

Fellows

Team