26. Speculative Designs & Embodied Imagination

Written By alexa firmenich

“What we imagine is in a sense what we are and who we become. There is such a strong correlation between imagination, invention and innovation.”

- Anab Jain

 

SYNOPSIS:

What if you could inhabit the future? In this episode, we dive into the work of Superflux, the visionary design studio turning imagination into tangible worlds. From multispecies banquets and rewilded ecological sanctuaries to mythic friezes that re-enchant cityscapes, co-founder Anab Jain shares how embodied experiences can transform how we see — and shape — the world.

Join us as we explore speculative design, active hope, and the power of imagination to move us beyond ecological breakdown and into interspecies thriving. A celebration of wonder, possibility, and the art of asking: "What if?"

 
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GUEST BIO:

Anab Jain (she/her) is a filmmaker, designer, and futurist renowned for her pioneering work on more-than human and ecological thinking. Through the work of her award winning studio Superflux, Jain and her co-founder Jon Ardern prioritise raising questions over demanding answers, with clients including Google AI, Cabinet Office UK, and IKEA. She has delivered talks at TED, Skoll, House of Lords, and House of Commons UK, and exhibited at MoMA New York, V&A London, MAK Vienna, and Museum of the Future Dubai. Anab is also a Professor for Design Investigations at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna and has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Arts, London.

Anab Jain spends her time peering ahead into possible futures and reporting As a filmmaker and educator, and a designer of provocative, tangible experiences, Anab urges us to consider a new vision for design – one that moves beyond our narrow focus on the human experience towards recognising the interdependence of all life on Earth. She forewarns that neither naked fear nor blind hope, but only a deep-seated curiosity about what lies ahead can help us manage the uncertainties of our shared futures.

QUOTES:

  • At Superflux we are exploring the space between knowing and doing. Speculative design, or critical design fiction, are forms of practice and philosophical approaches that help people imagine what else could be.

  • What we imagine is in a sense what we are and who we become. There is such a strong correlation between imagination, invention and innovation.

  • I want to emphasize that it is super important to learn, to relearn, to make our body an important part of our decision making process.

  • The intimate and almost unspoken relationship between ecology, as in, not just nature, but everything that we are connected with, uh, your body, your heartbeat, your breath, the river, the flow of the river, the prayer wheels, uh, moving past because of the streams of water, um, the flags, the sort of, um, chants of the monks in the inner distance, the, the beautiful hum of, uh, someone, uh, preparing a meal, the, the sort of, uh, poetry of birds in, in, in an orchestra and all of that sort of has no division

  • Cultural work is climate action, because when you care for something, you want to act on it. You can tell people as much as you want. We know all the facts, the data is there, and yet it's not enabling the kind of action at the scale and with the urgency that we need. And why is that? I don't think there is a gap in knowledge or gap in intellect. I think there is a gap in caring. I think there's a gap in imagination of how different the world could look if we cared. We always assume anything that is not like the present is likely to be difficult.

  • How do you take people on a journey through a space where you know that things are going to get worse before they get better? And how do you help people navigate that journey, hold multiple possibilities in their mind, and not retreat from the ache and discomfort of those possibilities?

  • Fundamentally, even though I've spent 15 years of my life thinking about futures and the second, third, fourth order consequences of things, I still live with a sense of hope, because if I didn't, I couldn't really function.

  • Hope is not utopia. I lean heavily on Ursula Le Guin's ideas of hope and imagination.  It's active hope that comes from our actions in navigating these crises.  It isn't a fixed moment in time as much as beacons of hope.

  • There is a deep cognitive dissonance that is going to stop us from acting — this desire not to address ambiguity, an aversion to risk, the desire to keep the system in the state it currently is.

  • We will never truly know what the hummingbird wants, or needs, or is thinking. But what we can do is try and explore the adjacent spaces to see what they need. To encounter the other species that they're engaging with. To understand the need for the river to flow in this uneven way, so that some of the other species can come and drink.  That level of deeply interconnected ecological systemic thinking is what I'm trying to get at.

  • In that piece we moved from speculative realism to mythopoetic fabulation.  We found that one of the most powerful ways of catalyzing imagination is through myth and fantasy in ways that are familiar yet deeply personal, disconcerting and even unfamiliar.

  • At that age, when you're seven, eight, nine, there wasn't even a question of why on earth would you ask me to bring a different species to the dining table?

  • We need to rewild our spirit and we need to rewild ourselves before we can rewild the world around us. So what does it mean to rewild ourselves? I think it means that we start to see the world and our place in it differently. That we pay attention to the hummingbird and the ecosystem it needs to thrive, and to consider the various other species that are then connected to that ecosystem.

  • In India we have architecture for animals. In Gujarat where I'm from, you have basically a sort of totem, but it's a pigeon house. They are beautiful, and they're disappearing, but they're these intricately carved little homes for pigeons to rest in.

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