A futurecrafting experiment conducted in November 2017. We started from the current conditions and environmental challenges in the region. We asked, “What are the (environmental) critical uncertainties in the American Southwest?” and used the Causal Layered Analysis to probe this question. The result was a backstory of “Shadow Belmont”, a speculative urban centre in Arizona in a parallel present or possible future.

Pero a nosotros no nos dan miedo las ruinas, porque llevamos un mundo nuevo en nuestros corazones. Ese mundo está creciendo en este instante.  Buenaventura Durruti

The three critical uncertainties identified by the participants were heat, water and tech industry. The tables below summarise the causes underlying each of the uncertainties, as well as possible alternatives specific to Shadow Belmont.

… backstory of the shadow belmont world (…)

When we are frightened it can feel like we are trapped under water, under ice. The mythic directive in such a moment is unusual. It says this: go deeper. Attend to the Goddess underneath the unfolding. There’s no restoration without courtship. Don’t smash your knuckles raw on the ice, but dive down further — seemingly the opposite of what everyone on the surface wants you to do. But of course, the diver swims down not just with their terror, but with their stories, their artfulness, their skill. Most importantly, most wonderfully, their love. Ironically, only by diving deeper can the ice melt. Martin Shaw

Headlines from “Saguaro Times”, daily newspaper in “Shadow Belmont”

• Government is (still) the medium
• New century calendar updates approved
• Water tokens fluctuating
• Wiccan Goddess elected to government in a landslide victory
• The governor reveals the new monument “to honor our heroes, the brave homeless”
• Salt River Shade Route: new public transit “Covered protection everywhere you want to be”
• Polls suggest that engineering majors at all time low, while ficto-criticism, coven studies and environmental theory at all time high
• Shade traversal association conscripts snowbirds for summer cycles

• Heat attunement classes by Cowboy Missionaries at the Desert Monastery
• Saguaro monks lead attunement festival preparation
• The water levels have spoken!
• Desert attunement center reopens after possession season
• Death pilgrims return

• New season shadow patterns emerge
• Sounds of meteors this spring
• Architectural structures form ecomimetic shade routes
• Sprouts cracked Phoenix-Tucson highway creating a new venue the Desert Fest
• Landscaping co-ops beautify the buffer zone
• How to feed your bats?
• Seven Arm Jack still standing after floods
• Drought cycles lengthening

• Where to see, what to do during this summer migration (with cooking tips)
• Festival of Shades at the Occult Shade monastery featuring Ethereal Dead
• Pokemon Go - Capture that Heat!
• The sweet smell of success: Mesquite
• Maple syrup - lemon preserve exchange ~ Again!
• 3rd International Conference on Shade Studies to be held in Phoenix
• Local native community hosts 12th Annual low-tech cooling festival

• Tech boom or antenna bubble?
• Antennae repairs not included in dust tax rewrite
• Nomad tech on smart grids
• Seasonal drift stresses old infrastructure

• Tree-cycle clocks vandalised by property fundamentalists
• Gun-range courtyard dispute ongoing
• Power execs sentenced to 10 years shade growth
• Shadow-world expedition washed away by flash-floods (Expect hermeneuts and invite time intensification; Open your courtyards at siesta time)

• In shade we trust!
• I throw up my arms in despair
• These arms are (not) made for hugging
• IRS = Internal Review of Shades
• Shade grown coffee (and children) are rich, full and robust
• Calling all late bloomers (you're right on time!)
• Sand of the Free, Sprawl of the Brave!

We no longer have roots, we have aerials. We no longer have origins, we have terminals. McKenzie Wark

Further notes on: resonances | experiments | fieldtrip_2