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Paper short abstract:

Building on ethnographic fieldwork, this practice-based research experiments with multisensory storytelling technologies to co-create and negotatiate speculative futures according to the perceptions of the Nahuales of Milpa Alta, in Mexico City.

Paper long abstract:

Led by Gloria Anzaldúa's invitation (2015) to decolonise reality through Nepantla epistemology (understood as 'in-between' zones with the potential for transformation), this transdisciplinary project navigates the intersection of Indigenous Futurisms, Latinx queer feminist theory and decolonial research methods in order to trace the processes and implications of co-creating extended reality (XR) storytelling environments with indigenous knowledge guardians. Building on ethnographic fieldwork with the Nahuales of the Nahuatl-speaking cultural organisation, Calpulli Nahui Ollin in Milpa Alta, a rural municipality in the south of Mexico City, this practice-based research experiments with emergent forms of immersive and multisensory storytelling technologies to co-create, critically negotatiate and activate speculative futures according to the lifeworlds, narratives and alternate perceptions of the Nahuales of Milpa Alta.

The Calpulli Nahui Ollin offer a decolonising lens through which to understand the Nahual, a trickster entity typically understood by contemporary Mexicans to be bad brujos, evil sorcerers or shamanic shapeshifters who can turn into jaguars or curse a lover. According to the Calpulli Nahui Ollin, a Nahual is a person of wisdom (or knowledge guardian) who acquires ancestral knowledge about their local environment and plays a political role by imparting cosmic wisdom to their neighbourhood.