!? | Words for the Future

Punctuation marks are the dynamics of written language, and of their politics, as Nina Powers sharply observes. As part of her larger research into contemporary words, symbols and images, she lets the exclamation-mark – highly overused in certain dominant digital-media discourses – into the urgently needed question-mark of not-knowing, ignorance and exploration… In response, choreographer Michiel Vandevelde decided to move beyond the exclamation-mark / question-mark power-dynamic all together and draw a whole series of speculative punctuation marks for the future; offering a completely different kind of language politics.

Words for the Future is a many-voiced series of ten words that point to the possible imaginations of various futures. Ten people from diverse fields of knowledge were asked to propose a word for the future through an essay, while an artist in whose work this particular world seemed to already be latently present, was invited to respond to it. Bringing both perspectives together in one publications, each issue becomes a dialogue around one word.

!? is issue #9 in the series Words for the Future, curated and edited by dramaturg Nienke Scholts. (The full series (limited edition) is available through San Serriffe aswell.)