Dreaming the Future w/ Pierre-Christophe Gam
BONUS | Dubai Future Forum #01
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Bonus episode recorded live from the Dubai Future Forum at the Museum of the Future in partnership with the Dubai Future Foundation on 19 November 2024.
Summary
Conceptual Artist Pierre-Christophe Gam shares his thoughts on the transformative power of imagination to shape reality, the potential of the African continent to become a global leader, and how to dream futures that reflect our individual aspirations and collective desires.
Guest Bio
Pierre-Christophe Gam is a French-born conceptual artist whose contemporary multimedia installations investigate the future through myths, technology, and dreams. Trained as an interior architect at ENSAD in Paris and CSM in London, he founded TOGUNA WORLD, a digital-native research laboratory that merges art, design, and foresight to decolonise conversations about the future and amplify diverse voices from the Global South. A fellow at the MIT Open Doc Lab, his work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Vitra Design Museum, the Addis FotoFest, and the Unseen Photo Festival.
Show Notes
01:55 Using the Past to Shape the Future
04:31 Methodologies from Ifá Tradition
08:40 Feeling-Based Visioning
09:05 Imagining Ideal Futures
15:51 Global Collaboration and Art Installations
12:21 Individual Desires and Collective Vision
20:45 Impact of Technological Accelerations on Human Life
28:41 Africa's Future
Links
Transcript (AI-Generated)
NOTE: This transcript is AI-generated and unedited. It may contain errors. A human-transcription is coming soon.
Pierre-Christophe Gam: There's no such thing as utopia because what we see as very normal today, even in terms of technology, the device we're using and so forth, a few centuries ago, this was looked as impossible. So there's no limits into what human can create. The only limits are the limits of our imagination.
Luke Robert Mason: You're listening to the FUTURES Podcast, live from the Dubai Future Forum at the Museum of the Future, where you can not only witness the future, but you can shape it too. On this show, we meet the scientists, technologists, artists, and philosophers working together to dramatically alter what it means to be human.
Some of their predictions will be preferable; others might seem impossible, but none of them are inevitable. My name is Luke Robert Mason, and I'm your host for this session. What can our dreams tell us about the future? Could dreaming, like foresight, be employed as a method for manifesting the world we want to live in?
While our visions of the future are deeply personal, the impact of these imaginaries can be profoundly personal. Joining me this morning is artist Pierre Christophe Gamme, who explores this concept by using identity and history as the foundational elements for crafting the future. Pierre, thank you for being here.
Thank you for being with me at the Futures Podcast at the Dubai Future Forum. I guess my first question is your work. It's inspired by ancient myths rooted in Africa's past. Pre colonial heritage. So could you tell me how you use that past as the raw material to craft and imagine the future?
Pierre-Christophe Gam: So I think I need to give context about myself and my work.
So I'm a visual artist and a researcher and the founder of Toguna World, which is an art and foresight research laboratory. And the goal of the platform is very much to use art spirituality, As a way to facilitate transcultural conversation on desirable future. In the context of the, of this work, essentially, I looked at IFA, which is a spiritual tradition from West Africa, essentially from the Yoruba.
So Yoruba, it's Nigeria, Togo, Benin, but it's as well, the tradition that you find across the African diaspora from Brazil, when you look at Kadomblé, when you Go to Santeria in Cuba, Voodoo in Haiti. The kind of cosmology behind all of this tradition is Kamsa Mipha. And if it, at the same time, a philosophy, it is a science and a spiritual tradition.
And the role of Ifa is essentially to study how energy is transmuted into matter. And in the IFA context, there is this understanding that everything that exists in our world, humans included, essentially all stem from the same primordial energy. And what I do through Toguna, essentially, I'm interested in, how can we foster ambitious, bold, proactive solutions.
Positive visions of the future with the understanding that the present in which we live today is essentially informed by imagination, right? Everything that exists around us stem from my imagination. And very often when you think about future I think the context of it, like something like where we are today with the Dubai future forum, we have this foresight methodology that look, that makes a kind of difference between possible future and utopia.
And the argument of my work is very much to say that there's no such thing as utopia because what we see as very normal today, even in terms of technology, the device we're using and so forth, a few centuries ago, this was looked as impossible. So there's no limits into what human can create.
The only limits are the limits of our imagination. And essentially what I do with IFA is to facilitate a space where participants can imagine beyond self limiting beliefs. And so we can start envisioning visions of the future that are rooted in our core desires. So that's why I call it dreams. So our core innermost desires.
And this becomes the foundation for the entire ritual exercise.
Luke Robert Mason: I want to talk about that compatibility between spirituality and foresight and dream theory and foresight. Because those things feel incompatible, but you're finding a way to bring them together. So what is that methodology?
Pierre-Christophe Gam: Essentially so we go back to Ifa.
So in Ifa tradition, there is this idea that for humans, so I mentioned before this transmutation between energy and matter. And in Ifa, there is this understanding that humans are co creator of our reality of our world. And we create the world in collaboration with nature, right? And the way that we create is informed by imagination.
But for humans, we have to be conscious of five pillars. And translated in English, these pillars looks at the body, the mind, the spirit, the heart, and the soul. And these are the five pillars for which humans create reality, for which humans contribute to the process of creation. And so through the exercise, there is a, there is an onboarding part that is very much experience, right?
So when people can go online right now and to go now, that come and they will see the sanctuary of dream, which is designed as a digital temple. And within that temple, there was a series of videos. And there's one in particular called the dream manifesto and is very much served to center the philosophy Of the entire exercise.
And what I was mentioning inside of imagination and reality and through the exercise, once people are fully emboldened, essentially the emboldening is to help them really all come to the same foundation as the way that we look at reality. Essentially the idea that the way we look at reality informs the way we project ourself in the world.
And it's very much to center imagination as the foundation of our material construct, even in terms of legal, cultural system, et cetera, all stem from imagination. Through the ritual, we look at five questions. How will we eat? Play, dream, love, and pray in the context of an ideal future. So it looks at food production, food distribution, play looks at the economy, but very much without money as a, with questioning, because money essentially is a social commodity.
Construct. So it's about what is behind the economy. And to me, what is behind the economy is human collaboration, monies and incentives that is used to move people towards a shared vision, a shared goal, right? But they have many other currency that exists and that have enabled humans to collaborate across time.
So it's very much about how do we collaborate with one another? And now do we work towards collective Vision shared vision and very much centering play. So basically joy in that process. Then there is another one that looks at how will we dream? And dream looks at education. But education from two aspects.
One aspect is how do we share and facilitate the sharing of knowledge? And how do we Nurture strengthen and empower inner knowledge, inner wisdom, the attrition, the inner voice, right? So how do we on both hand facilitate the shaming of external knowledge, but at the same time as well support the development of, inner world?
Then there's always one that looks at how will we love and so love looks at community. It looks at family. It looks at extended community, the village, and then civic society as a whole. And it very much looks at what does mutual support interpersonal relationship, interdependency look like. And then the final one looks at how will we pray, but not from the place of religion, but very much from the place of spirituality.
So looking at wellness, mental wellness, physical wellness and what kind of ritual system can we. put in place individual or collective in order to help us functions operate at the ultimate best, essentially. So these are the five questions that we looks. And for each question, essentially what I asked the participant is how would you like to feel essentially?
So the aspect of dream is very much centered on participants, innermost desires. And in each scenarios, they're very much imagining. The core positive feelings, right? So when they're imagining it, actually feeling it and that become the foundation for the collective exercise.
Luke Robert Mason: To lead with a feeling rather than the thought is an interesting way to alchemize the future to manifest the future honest.
You mentioned that how utopia doesn't feel like it's possible. And yet I. Deal futures might be possible. Yes. So what is the difference between those two things and how do they, how do you go through the process of creating those idealized rather than utopian style futures?
Pierre-Christophe Gam: Yes. I think what I do very much is to center people's desires.
I have an image, which is, I believe, the way that most people go through life. So imagine you live in a small village and that evening you decide to go to a restaurant and there's four, there's three options. First one, let's say it's it's Spanish cuisine. The second one is French and the third one is, let's say Nigerian cuisine.
And you say, okay, we're going to go for. The Nigerian restaurants, so that decision of the options of restaurant in your village, no one consulted you in making, you just found them. Okay. What is available? And then once you enter the restaurants, a waiter will come to you and we present you with a menu.
And in that menu, you'll see a list of dish. And the next thing you lose, you'll choose based on what is available in that restaurant. But again, you are not consulted in that decision making the owner of the restaurant and the chef made that decision based on their own personal interests and agenda. And the truth of it is that this is how most people go through life.
Most people go through life by making decisions based on options they believe are available to them. And the way we consider what is available to us is based on the story we have of the world, and the story we have of ourselves, and our choices. Ability our agency in that construct, right? And even within one family, within one society, each of us have a very different stories of the world.
But if you consider the fact that everything that we see around us, ultimately, when you think what is an idea an idea before it is materialized, it's an invisible world. It's invisible thoughts with someone's mind. So something that is not, it's immaterial. And the truth of it is that everything that exists in our world, this is the inception of it, it all started as something that was invisible and ultimately the way we should look at reality, we should look at it as the sum of dreams and ideas accumulated across time and places, that's it.
That's what it is. And so when you want to think about, and that dichotomy of utopia always tend to say that this is possible and this is not possible, right? As if they are imminent truth that determine reality. And as humans, the best we can do is to find compromise within our life in trying to balance ourself with it.
And to me, what I. I looked at it for what it truly is. It's an idea. It's a proposition. And the same way that we have created money, when you go back in the history of money, there were multiple currencies that existed at the same time. They are now pushed for new type of currency, digital. All of these things are often sometimes a political history with the way that money was imposed by.
Power by force, by, authorities, by Kings and so forth. The historical, the way that gold became the main exchange currency. At some point, all of these things, the Breton mood, all of these things are politics at political things. And they're just. Arbitrary ideas that eventually are so rooted and embedded within the fabric of our lives that we no longer question them, and we believe them to be as real as nature, and they are not.
And so what I do very much with that exercise is to bring back people to look at reality for what it truly is, and to really start imagining future from a place of possibilities. And I believe what should be our core foundation in imagining future should be our desire. Thank you. I will be
Luke Robert Mason: so essentially it's a method to question the fundamental operating system of reality.
You mentioned their money. We just take it as granted. That is the way in which the world functions. Listening to you speak. I'm thinking of individuals who engage and many individuals in this room and in this Conference engage in this thing called scenario planning. It's about putting bets on definite ways that the future is going to emerge.
But what you're suggesting is that we can almost virtualize the future, not virtual in terms of virtual reality, but virtual in terms of use our imagination to suggest a multitude of possibilities that then we can reach out to and bring me into the act. To actualize them or to alchemize them in the way in which you're talking.
Now, if everybody engages in that sort of practice, what you end up with is a diversity of future visions. And of course, not all of those futures can come to pass. So how do you contend with that diversity of futures? How do we live in a world that has a multitude of futures available to us, all born of our imaginative processes?
Pierre-Christophe Gam: So what I came to realize is that people ultimately want the same things across diversity, across culture, class, ethnicity, religion, because now right now I've done, I just completed a five series of investigation with a network called Africans Rising, which is the largest grassroots network across Africa, 44, 000 members, and we are working together across a series of activations We did completed the first one and you had people from all over the continent, different obviously, gender, age employments, backgrounds, lawyer, student, researcher, scientist like across spectrum.
And what you find out is that when you engage through that exercise is that because it's about how do you want to feel? That is the fundamental question. Often, if you go with scenarios, people start by what they believe is possible, what they've been conditioned to believe that is possible, right? And so you start from a place of limitation, I would say scarcity.
And here it's about first determine what is it you want to feel. So in terms of your ideal value scenario, it's value based. It's very much about for people to be able to center the agency and the core feeling in that exercise. How would you like to feel? So if you could design your ideal reality, What would it look how, what would it feel like?
And then based on that feeling, this is now how they try to design scenarios that could potentially sustain that vision. And when we go through the ritual, I have them first thinking for themselves. So it's not something that is. It's just about you. It's not about thinking of something that can be possible for society.
And I'm going to have to bring everybody to agree with me now for yourself, in terms of your core feelings and desire and values, what would it look like? And so they first spend some time individually to imagine, and then they share it as a group. And what you find out is that. People want the core fundamental things and what becomes an interesting for the exercise is that you'll have specific, characters, experiences, stories, et cetera.
And this is based on the stories that now you start finding very interesting scenarios and the things that come through the exercise initially, they look very, ambitious, right? And even when you see people sometimes sharing the vision, they're like, okay, people might think I'm crazy. This might seem too much, et cetera.
But then you realize that actually all of these things are very plausible. And it's very much around this idea that, when people say, I love peace, but everybody wants war. So therefore I have to be a wise and I have to be rational and I need to prepare for war. And this kind of I want peace, but everybody else wants war is that you have this kind of self fulfilling prophecy where you auto sensor and then you do not allow your voice to emerge at the surface to be able to actualize it.
And when they go through that exercise and often this ability to be able to have in question to even consider what we want. It's not something that most of us do when you think about in our society, very often the most successful people in this current social construct, you can look at capitalism.
It's just an idea is like a video game. It's like monopoly. We determine this is the parameters for which we're going to interact with one another. And this is what we're going to determine as the economy and all of that, right? All of that is a proposition and it's political and there's reason behind it.
But often the one that win managers. So it means the people that perform the, they understand the rules and that are able to in many ways shut down or silence a true core of who they are and very much find meanings and validation within that external project, right? And so the way that people win in this society is by knowing how to numb your inner voice and by questioning what feels the most natural to you.
And if you go now, I'm an adult, I'm mature, this was the moment of my youth and my illusions and et cetera. And what I do with the exercise is to create a space where people can actually feel safe in listening to themselves. So it's not me presenting my own vision. It's. Asking them, but how would it look like and what you find out is that people very much want very similar things, but at the same time, they're very nuanced and what become powerful is first when you get to hear, so when they get to hear the vision shared by the different, it's a validation.
About the truth that was in them, but that they were not allowing themselves to explore. And then you find beauty in the nuances that everybody brings because the fundamental core is the same, but then you have nuances around food production around different type of economy around different type of distribution and so forth.
This is when both of those things People are telling stories and they say, I remember when I was a kid or had this experience and this happened to me. And this becomes a very empowering exercise, but at the same time, a very practical, the outcome of it comes out being very practical. And so the way that we're doing, I mentioned the engagement that we just completed, we're going to finalize a report at the end of January and we're going to disseminate it.
Over the next year, so I'm going to disseminate it through art installation. We're going to be producing a book. There's going to be a series of actual, the art installation are going to be global. And the first one is going to be in May of next year with the Onassis Foundation in Greece. And there's going to be a series across the world.
And very much the goal of this exercise will be to share what came through this project. probably through this investigation and very much invite the general public to question reality and more and very much as well to create space where they can hear and listen to the core desire. And this would be the space from which they will interact with the world.
Luke Robert Mason: You mentioned something Very important there. The idea is self fulfilling prophecy because that's at the core of what you're talking about. Self fulfilling prophecy can otherwise be understood as be careful what you wish for because it might just come true. And hearing you speak, it feels like what your work does is it allows people to hone their wishes.
And be aware that what they desire could come to pass, and therefore find methods in which to engage with dreaming as this creative, imaginative process of co creation, with reality.
Pierre-Christophe Gam: Yes, very much very much so it's about creating space where people can listen to the inner voice and discover the core story, right?
Which in many ways has been often numbed by society for multiple reasons. And having that as the foundation from which we get to think about our world and our society. When you think about the time in which we are right now, there is an acceleration of the future in many ways driven by technology.
You think about AI, you think about gene modification you think about all of these. things that potentially will come to totally transform the way we understand even what it means to be human. We're discussing earlier about this humanoid, this robot, Android robot and so forth. And in many ways, these conversations are decided without, As in conversation in the room that these are agendas that are informed by Silicon Valley, by global finance is a very narrow vision of what it means to be humans, what it means to exist within nature and the purpose of life, right?
And so they have a very limited view of what of the world with clear ideologies, which often are not clear philosophies. Which sometimes are very akin to religion or doctrine, which often are not made explicit. And these things are just presented to the public as unavoidable. And the best way you can do is to become, it's to adapt or you face the risk of becoming obsolete.
Obviously, they know very well that the only way these visions are wishes and the only way this vision could come to pass if we accept them, and often the way we accept something is whether you want it or not, there's a moment when you believe that story, whatever it is, whether positive or negative, to be truer or more real or more potent than your own dream.
The same way with money, let's say, right? We all have money is not real money is a social construct, but money has a real impact in our lives. When we lack money, when we have money, often people have an emotional relationship is money like a quasi spiritual identity. Money is is a Gregor, let's say in a spiritual context, right?
It has its own living form. But that power we give it to it is not something that it has intrinsically. And in many ways, the reason why there's such a competition right now to be able to capture people's imagination and dreams is because the people that say they have specific agenda very much understand that this agenda would only come to pass if people embrace them.
Whether willingly or unwillingly, but there's a moment when we have to accept that this is reality and that we're going to have to organize ourselves around it. Whether I fall against it, but this is reality. And I think what I propose through the exercise is to not be in a place of reaction, but understand the fact that this is just an idea.
This is just a proposition. And instead of being from a place of reaction and fear and anxiety, invest in a very different way into our desire. Our core feelings, and we build space where that can be rooted in our imagination and what happens from that place, it allows you to be able to identify core ethics, core values that can then serves as an individual as a blueprint in the way that you go about your life into making decision, and then you can see when something aligns or doesn't align.
And then you can see when something serves you fundamentally and when it does not in a way that is more. More genuine than just commodities, than just consumerism, than just, a friend of mine speaker looks at the modern capitalist society as the society of perpetual orgasm, over nothing, this site you were, the self gratification is presented as the ultimate goal, but from a very individual perspective, that is very Schizophrenic in many ways, self destructing and there's no purpose, like you exist, you're like you exist in relationship to nothing and this allows you, it allows people to be rooted, to be in, in communion with.
Transcribed the world at large and to have a clear compass through which they get to individually to make to think about the life and future. And at the same time as well, what I'm interested in is how can we bring about other alternative scenarios of the future?
When you think about in, in, in literature, in science fiction, in movies, often the project that are being funded are dystopian narratives with always very clear ideology of future. And then you say, Oh, it's interesting. It seems like science fiction and form technology. No, or technological development, all technical development are based on hypothesis.
So they're based on stories, right? And there are stories that you choose to invest in and there are stories that you choose not to invest in. And so in many ways, what you have with science fiction, it's a conditioning. Agenda. When you bring forward to people consciousness, certain type of stories and when you, if you were to ask these people, is it how you like to live?
They will tell you no, but you just present it as if, but this is as if there is a Zeitgeist. There's a spirit of the world that supersede everything and that it has its own, it's all, it's very spiritual, but they don't see it as spiritual. This is a very spiritual way of looking at reality as if there's this thing that just exists above and that just have its own directions.
And as humans, we just have to somehow try to don't miss the train and, and catch the train in its, in his movement, if you don't want to be left out and obviously this is not true.
Luke Robert Mason: Oh yeah, the Hegelian notion of spirit that travels through time and we're just passengers on this big journey into the future.
Although you said there, the statement that we live in a world of accelerating technology and accelerating change. Those sorts of statements anyway, those are ways in which to express our current moments. That's see it create those sort of self fulfilling prophecies. And yet what we do in response to that is not always dry for continued acceleration, but we start to have these sorts of conversations about how do we amplify what is important about.
Being human. And that I feel is what art, the work that you do does so well. It captures not something technological, but something human about our experience of reality. Yes, very true. And I want to talk about the context in which you create your work. Cause you were interested in your work looks at, and some of the collaborations you mentioned there, the African continent and the African continent has been, it's gone through these moments in time whereby there's been a moment of Afro pessimism followed by a moment of Africa rising and your work really likes to explore what the opportunity, is.
for Africa and how it will represent itself within the future. So what are some of those opportunities that the African continent presents?
Pierre-Christophe Gam: So going into this moment of Afro pessimism and the new wave that came about called Africa Rising, it's very much true that in the, after the independence period movement there was in the 60s, 70s a movement of optimism where Africa started to, African governments and leaders very much invested in education, in health, in culture and so forth.
And they were. Very much able to build very ambitious project with a clear vision of what the future could be look like. And all of that came to be dismantled through the eighties with the structural adjustment policies that when forced in the eighties and that very much showed the full impact of the nineties.
And so when you had this moment of Africa, Afro pessimism was very much in that moment in the nineties where African government was being destabilized, internal fighting. All of that's very much rooted in neocolonialism. But that was that moment, like this any of, of pain in many ways.
But if you project in the future by the end of the century, Africa is going to become the most populated continent in the world. It'd be, Nigeria in particular in one century from now will be the most populated country in the world before India. And China will become third. 40 percent of the living population will be on the African continent.
So it means that the way we understand the dynamic of power in the world today will change drastically. And I think even the estimation is that even by 2060, Africa will become the most populated continent in the world. So it is for me in that context, in that what is very important that as we foster commercial on future, the African youth living today.
Is in, is invested in a process of imagining of being able to define what does a successful future looks like? What are the values that they want to see sustain? They want to see amplify. How does that design looks like? How does it feels like? And so that the option doesn't just become, let's just be like.
America, let's just be like, China, or essentially things that are not necessarily connected to your own fundamental place of being values and so forth. So let's ask ourself, what does success look like? What has an ideal future looks like? With the understanding that the future of tomorrow is going to be informed ultimately by the dreams of today, right?
When you think about a space like Dubai, it was interesting yesterday when we had the tour is that you went through the museum. I forgot the name, but you went through this museum where you had the visualizations of what Dubai looked like in the fifties. Yeah. This is a dream in action that is actualized with visions.
Some of the stories were referenced that came from outside, but it's very much a project that is being materialized. And so I'm very much commissioned on the fact that the future is going to be informed by tomorrow, by the present story. And so it is essential to have multiplicities of dreams in the conversation.
And I hear when you were saying about, but what happened is you have competing dreams. I believe that we should have many dreams happening at the same time, the moment that people are able to dream and able to very much look inward and being able to identify what they desire. This is when society function at its best.
My father used to say that most people die before they reach the age of 20. Years old and only buried after the 60th birthday. So what it meant is that many people go through life in many ways, like zombies, in the sense where they have accepted the idea that reality is something that is determined outside of them.
And the best things they can do, like I was saying before, is to try to find meanings or justifications somehow into the options made available to me, or that they believe are available to them. And again, I believe that reality is very opposite. And in the context of IFA, going back, of IFA, sorry, going back to what we were discussing at the beginning, is very much centered the fact that in the IFA tradition is decided that the whole universe, everything that we see in its full diversity, in its inception is just one dot.
It's all in the same thing. And so if you look at it from that perspective, then you realize that we need to engage with reality from the place of game and playfulness. And we need to create and co create with reality in a way that is creative, artistic and playful.
Luke Robert Mason: Pierre Christophe, thank you for showing us how to play the future with our dreams and asking us the question of how do we want to feel in that future?
And I just want to say thank you for joining us for the Futures Podcast live from the Dubai Future Forum. If you like what you've heard, then you can find out more by visiting futurespodcast dot net. Please put your hands together and join me in thanking Pierre Christophe Gamme.
Pierre-Christophe Gam: Thank you very much.
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