Dr. Ruth Jones and Dr. David Watkins will present “ Future Ruins and New Worlds“, a collaborative artist's book that explores the speculative and emergent nature of world-building. Drawing on Seyisfjörour's volatile environment, shaped by geological instability, climate, and limited resources, the project reflects on fragile worlds formed through the intersection of human and nonhuman forces.
This artist's book resists conventional hierarchy and narrative structure, inviting the reader to co-construct new worlds with each interaction. Composed of intersecting theories, part deconstructed academic paper, part pulped speculative fiction, Future Ruins and New Worlds explores the shifting (mis) alignments at intersections where multiple actants embark on the messy work of world-building in collaboration. The project critiques authoritarian global narratives while offering space for reimagining possibilities, collaboration, and resilience.
Jones' practice explores the visibility and agency available to women through mesmeric world building, while Watkins investigates networks, from global infrastructures to ecological systems like the Wood Wide Web. Future Ruins and New Worlds will use Seyisfjörour's context as a setting and a metaphor for precarious, emergent systems, each page an act of ongoing reformation that de-centers human agency and foregrounds entanglements. Each world built is particular to the entity that experiences it.
Website www.ruthkathrynjones.co.uk Instagram @ruthkathrynjones
Generative (mis)alignement -
This artist's book resists conventional hierarchy and narrative structure, inviting the reader to co-construct new worlds with each interaction. Composed of intersecting theories, part deconstructed academic paper, part pulped speculative fiction, Future Ruins and New Worlds explores the shifting (mis) alignments at intersections where multiple actants embark on the messy work of world-building in collaboration. The project critiques authoritarian global narratives while offering space for reimagining possibilities, collaboration, and resilience.
Jones' practice explores the visibility and agency available to women through mesmeric world building, while Watkins investigates networks, from global infrastructures to ecological systems like the Wood Wide Web. Future Ruins and New Worlds will use Seyisfjörour's context as a setting and a metaphor for precarious, emergent systems, each page an act of ongoing reformation that de-centers human agency and foregrounds entanglements. Each world built is particular to the entity that experiences it.
Website www.ruthkathrynjones.co.uk Instagram @ruthkathrynjones
Generative (mis)alignement -