Contribution short abstract:

My current research interest deals with how we care for and practice more viable futures in everyday life within the mundane routines of shopping, eating, sorting waste etc. Material objects may serve as temporary “tasters of the future”, reinforcing worries as well as hope for change.

Contribution long abstract:

7 sentences describing my research interests and motivation to participate in the workshop:

My current research interest deals with why, when, and how we care for and practice more viable futures in everyday life within the mundane routines of shopping, eating, sorting waste etcetera. In everyday life climate change and other environmental issues are often materialized and sensed in the choice of organic groceries, in attempts of avoiding microplastic, or in recycling organic waste. These materialities unfold affective agency within the temporal scale of the here-and-now as well as a near or remote future. In the workshop I would like to discuss whether and how the sensory and material objects allow imaginaries of a better future to tangibly be practiced in the present. As an affective temporality, viable future may not only be a far-off time, separate to the present, but through material objects also something to be experienced and felt ‘in’ and as the present (cf. Rebecca Coleman 2017:3) Thus, material objects may serve as temporary “tasters of the future”, reinforcing worries as well as hope for change. My concrete examples will be drawn from everyday diaries written by students (an myself) on mundane future practicing.