Fantastic Futures is a collaborative team of students, artists, doctors, and future leaders from Iraq and the United States. For their recently completed Rhizome Commission, Fantastic Futures created a free and open online sound archive that examines concepts of time through the recording, collaging, and sharing of sounds between these two countries. For these young people, faced with huge questions about their future, the website serves as a platform to subvert unjust structures of power used to divide them by instead supporting each other and offering a means through which their stories might be heard. Their goal is nothing short of social justice and the means of achieving that are slow, steady, and subversively poetic.

For this event, which takes place in the New Museum Theater, Fantastic Futures will create a participatory performance of the website, enacted by humans wearing sounds. To further explore shared experiences of time, memory, and trauma between countries in conflict, audience members will be blindfolded for a portion of the event to enhance a synesthetic experience—listening to light. By slowing down, and possibly stopping time altogether, Fantastic Futures’s performance creates a space for careful listening and contemplation.

About Fantastic Futures:
Fantastic Futures is led by Huong Ngo (Hong Kong/United States), Or Zubalsky (Israel/United States), Andrew Persoff (United States), and Ali Salim Abood (Iraq). fantasticfutures.fm

Active Members include (listed by collaborations): Gabby Guglielmelli and Sarah Albayaty. Yousif Ability, Ibrahim Hayder Al-Zararee, and Adam Fernandez. Caeser Alward, George Monteleone, and Ali Salim Abood. Rafal Al Nasiri and Dena Soukieh. Hussein Basheer Hassafa, Ali Sameer, and Phil Stearns. Duaa Al-Musawi, Forqan Kadhem, and Solgil Oh. Sarah Al-Qadir and Or Zubalsky. Phuong Nguyen and Idil Yakut. Hala Almahdi, Al-Nasir Bellah Ishrak Al-Nasiry, and Sable Elyse Smith. Oras M. Alani and Daniella Krihely. Zaydoon W. Ali, Julio Hernandez, and Ali Nabil. Ban Alwan, Cindy Liang, and Nadeen Al-Sheikh. Teeba Alqassab, Ahyoung Moon, and Lina Thamer. Omar Greene and Tiba Mohammed. Dergam Haitham, Andrew Persoff, and Bahir Salah Ali. Shahad Al-Ebady, Huong Ngo, and Ma’an Thwainy. Mohammed Nayyef and Taha Asaad Albaiaty. Yossor Jamal and Radhwan Al Heety.