Throughout time, humans have developed essentials for survival—tools, kits and constructions for making it out of dire predicaments alive—anticipating the inconceivable.
As the world faces the unprecedented of the climate crisis and pandemics, impacts will vary over time and with the ability of different societal and environmental systems to mitigate or adapt. Human lifeways and ecosystems will be changed.
We seek images, ideas, words and inventions as well as survival manuals or proposals for constructions and installations—all for future readiness, whether practical, imaginative or speculative. We invite ideas ranging across all forms of knowledge and experience, art, design, creative writing, engineering, technology, fashion, architecture, medicine and more. Inventions may be DIY, make-from-home, upcycled, analog or tech.
Temperatures continue to rise, viruses continue to spread, frost-free and growing seasons lengthen, and heavy precipitation events increase. We will see droughts and heat waves, stronger hurricanes, dramatic sea-level rise, an ice-free Arctic, atmospheric rivers, flash droughts, polar vortices, bomb cyclones and thundersnows. There will be social and economic disparities. And there will be fire.
We encourage responses to notions of shelter and refuge, takes on shelter-in-place and ideas for how survival affects the meaning of and our associations with place. Do we seek refuge in or from the wilderness? What is the urban refuge? And is home a refuge when stay home is an order? We invite solutions that will have a positive impact—on the climate, in our response and on our lifeways. We seek inventive solutions rather than only seeking shelter and refuge from what may happen.
Email photos, texts or graphic files for posters at 36” x 48”. If you are open to your ideas being shared on the Museum’s social media vehicles, please include a note of “permission to share.”
Selected designs will be part of a printed and online journal and potential virtual or physical exhibition, depending on the emergency and urgency of the time. Selected survival ideas submitters will receive a $250 honorarium. No fee to enter/submit. Submit by sending files to seed@anchoragemuseum.org. Files must be 10MB or less. Include your name, email, social media handle and a statement (not more than 300 words in length) about the image, invention or idea. Some proposals for installations and constructions will be considered for commission.
You can also post ideas on Instagram and Twitter with the hashtags #futureready #anchoragemuseum #seedlabanchorage.
Deadline June 30, 2020
A project of the Anchorage Museum & its SEED Lab: Envisioning Possible Futures
Title
Future Ready: Survival Now + NextType
Competition Announcement (Ideas)Website
Organizers
Submission Deadline
June 30, 2020 01:04 PMVenue
Anchorage MuseumPrice
Free
