The Speculative Writing Workshop is a format developed by Sive Hamilton Helle and Gloria López Cleries. It uses speculative writing as a critical and creative method to examine how language, metaphors, and narratives shape our understanding of technology, progress, and the environment. Through collective writing exercises and guided conversations, participants explore the power of storytelling to question dominant ideologies and imagine alternative futures. Drawing inspiration from writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Donna Haraway, the exercises emphasise speculation not as prediction but as a way to open the future, making space for other possible worlds.

El Taller de Escritura Especulativa es un formato desarrollado por Sive Hamilton Helle y Gloria López Cleries. Utiliza la escritura especulativa como método crítico y creativo para examinar cómo el lenguaje, las metáforas y las narrativas dan forma a nuestra comprensión de la tecnología, el progreso y el medio ambiente. A través de ejercicios de escritura colectiva y conversaciones guiadas, los participantes exploran el poder de la narración para cuestionar las ideologías dominantes e imaginar futuros alternativos. Inspirándose en escritoras como Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler y Donna Haraway, los ejercicios hacen hincapié en la especulación no como predicción, sino como una forma de abrir el futuro, creando espacio para otros mundos posibles.

Speculative Imagination Workshop 1
14th, 15th, 16th August, 2025, Luleå Konsthallen
In collaboration with RISE  Research Institutes of Sweden, KKV Konstnärernas Kollektivverkstad Luleå, Sunderby Folk High School and Luleå Konsthallen Kulturens hus, with support from HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg.

The first iteration workshop focused on how metaphors and communicative strategies make data centres visible or invisible to the public. Over three days, participants visited RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden), observed data centre infrastructures, and analysed the language surrounding the so-called “green transition.”

Through speculative writing exercises, participants created scripts that reinterpret the narratives of technological progress. These texts were later recorded as sound pieces and presented in the exhibition. The workshop invited participants to think differently about the digital systems that underpin our everyday lives and to imagine new relationships with technology beyond efficiency and growth.

The second iteration examined the language of the mining industry in Sweden, focusing on advertising campaigns such as Den Svenska Gruvan by Åkerstam and other campaings by LKAB. Participants analysed how corporate storytelling shapes public perception of extractive industries, framing mining as essential for the green transition and national progress.

The workshop’s goals were to identify the myths and ideologies embedded in corporate narratives, to understand how emotion and storytelling legitimise technological and industrial development, and to use speculative writing as a method for rewriting these narratives. After analysing the campaigns on the media (Tik Tok, newspapers, websites), participants were invited to “play” with the language, bending, remixing, and transforming it to imagine alternative storytelling.