Together, we will attend to interconnected struggles through minor gestures—re/imagining bodies, worlds, and futurities through process-led, curious, critical and speculative practices—dismantling normativities that keep the monstrous at bay. Working from intersectional perspectives, in dialogue with more-than-human, queer, crip theories and glitch, cyborg, black and trans feminisms—we attune to the im/possibilities of (un)worlding.

Monstrous Futurities asks: What monstrous im/possibilities may emerge through practices of (un)learning dominant ideologies? How might these practices support justice-centred trans/formations in times of crisis, where the monstrous becomes a way of imagining and doing otherwise? What monsters and whose futurities? How might artistic strategies and expanded transdisciplinary practices engage in acts of (un)learning, (un)making, and (re)worlding? How can we collectively create radical, loving, and vulnerable responses against oppressive struggles and structures? How can we transition, transmute, and transform ourselves? What can we achieve together that we cannot alone?

MF speaks to the imaginaries and the possibilities of dreaming, thinking, feeling and creating from beyond what we think, feel and believe to know. It is our hope that, as a Temporary Programme, Monstrous Futurities emerge with radical tenderness, like wildflowers that appear within the cracks—resilient, vulnerable, unstoppable and deviant. Where “monstrosity can serve as a cultural means to examine ourselves. To meet ourselves as if for the first time.” – Bayo Akomolafe

Monstrous Futurities invites individuals with diverse lived experiences from different disciplines called to engage with the monstrous from their own situated positionalities and bodies, entangled with more-than-human worlds.

MF is for curious and compassionate thinkers, makers, movers, artists, film-makers, biologists, gardeners, researchers, designers, clowns, organisers, farmers, bodyworkers, policy-makers, archivists, technologists, hackers, writers, anthropologists, poets, and more.

Cultivating a transdisciplinary dialogue, we will work at the intersections and blurry edges of disciplines, like science fiction, critical AI, and disobedient body-based practices. This could look like an ecologist weaving together ecological fieldwork, speculative thinking, and deep listening to reimagine multispecies justice. 

We welcome students interested in process-led experimentations across living, material, embodied, critical and speculative artistic research practices that converse with monstrous futurities alongside intersectional struggles. Building on these explorations, we seek those who resonate with queer affective relations, where collective dreaming and action are crucial.

We approach both independent and collective study as something that arises through interdependent relations. Functioning like an ecosystem, we aim to create and cultivate a dynamic that oscillates across independent and collective learning containers.

While MF isn't specifically designed for collectives, collaborative groups and community-led practices may naturally form during the programme. We welcome applications from individuals and duos and those interested in working with organisations, groups or networks that they're already part of.

MF is committed to learning, (un)learning, and (re)learning in relation to the intersectionality of people's experiences and practices. MF advocates for responsibility to each/other, where care, individual agency, autonomy and accountability are bound to the collective work of liberation.

Monstrous Futurities follows a dynamic and cyclical learning rhythm - unfolding across three interdependent modules: (Un)learning, (Un)making, and (Un)worlding. Students explore transdisciplinary approaches through these modules, engaging reflexively with emergent, critical, and speculative writing, making, and becoming. 

MF supports students in their creative research processes over the two years through a rich, curated program that incorporates diverse voices, experiences, and practices from a group of core tutors and invited guests across the three contact spaces of Weave (seminar), Mutate (workshop), and Entangle (laboratory). Students will interrogate their relationships between theory and materiality, experimenting with their ideas and investigating the potential of trans/disciplinarity practices that are in dialogue with the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of and for transformation(s).

Students are expected to attend the program full-time (approx. 40 hrs per week) and participate in weekly in-person study days (approx. 2 days per week), including regular workshops, lectures, laboratories, off-campus visits, and site-specific interventions. While this structure provides an important and fertile foundation, it remains flexible and adaptable to shift/s throughout the programme.

Outside of these two in-person study days, students will be working interdependently on their projects and engaging with the other departments at Sandberg Instituut, attending inter-and extra-curricular activities, for example, with Unsettling and Rietveld Sandberg Research. This flexible schedule seeks to accommodate students' external work commitments and life responsibilities, including caregiving and parenting, whilst also creating a supportive and continuous learning container for the group. 

Each term concludes with collective and individual sharings, reflections, feedback sessions and assessments, organised with support from co-tutors and co-directors. During the third semester, (un)making, the students will focus on their written thesis. This then supports the fourth and final semester of (un)worlding, foregrounding students' material, situated and embodied practices - as they work towards their graduation show. This may include: group exhibitions, situated interventions, performances, political actions, curatorial initiatives, publications, pedagogical initiatives, plays, radio shows, and manifestos, to name a few.

During this period, students receive mentorship from co-directors, co-tutors and invited guests who will provide one-on-one and group support to assist and accompany the development of their thesis works and the fostering of potential partnerships.

The presentation and publication of each student's thesis project will be collectively organised in dialogue with the MF group, including the students, teaching staff, and programme directors. We welcome the unexpected responses that will emerge from and within both situated and porous practices when imagining worlds otherwise.

The monstrous is an invitation and a reminder of the multiplicity of small-scale interactions and minor gestures, both as an approach and a politics for engaging in transdisciplinary practices and relational (un)worlding. Through these entangled encounters, we trans-figure our monsters.