Conversations — False Parameters

Process is the work
Getting to know a thing
Commissions
Conversations
Publications
Other things we do

A fragment of a contact sheet for C.Ackerman’s Les Années 80, 1983. © Foundation Chantal Ackerman, image courtesy BOZAR Centre For Fine Arts Brussels

Working alongside others, we prod, explore and deconsecrate the sacred cows that shape how social change is being imagined, seeking to spark new ways of engaging with complex and entangled challenges.

In the name of Public Good - a line of questioning that began in Arantzazu through conversations with innovation ecosystem leaders focused on collaborative governance and alliances among small nations. It asks what the /a public good is, who gets to speak in its name, for whom it is defined, where legitimacy is rooted, and how we determine what is good versus not. As an extension, the inquiry now turns to psychedelics, artificial intelligence, and the law.

The Inaugural Thinkers in Residence - Exaptation, Dysphoria, the Strange and the Familiar.

Love & Policy - sermons by Judy Ling Wong to accompany and steward us on this adventure.

In the name of public good

What's the embedded ethics there?
Is it social liberalism? Is it harsh neoliberalism?
Is it some kind of weird mixture of the two?
Read on Substack

Anna Grant

Demos Helsinki, Finnish Innovation Grant Sitra

Thinkers in Residence

A landscape I didn't quite understand
Read in the book

Annesophie N orn

Museums for United Nations (UN Live)

In the name of public good

There is an unbelievable confusion, conceptual confusion, about the Common Good, common goods, public good, public goods and the general will...
Read on Substack

Antonio Casado

University of the Basque Country

In the name of public good

In my mind and when I hear public good, it's one of those dystopian terms. I don't think it's necessarily cynical, but I do think it's dangerous.
My personal mission or goal is to help people stay human in the hypertech world and that's important and so is critical thinking, abstract thinking - pure imagination. Do we have spaces where people are invited and inspired and where they desire to wonder, to be in awe, literally to wonder, to be “wonder-full”?
Read on Substack

Bria Clemmons

Global Sports Attorney

Thinkers in Residence

Between words and across words and underneath words
Read in the book

Dave King

Exaptive

Thinkers in Residence

I was a sponge
Read in the book

Diane Drubay

We Are Museums, Blueshift

In the name of public good

I believe that "public" means something we genuinely feel connected to, something we recognize as ours, and something we have a voice in shaping. I think that, for our well-being and for the common good, we need rich, meaningful relationships. At the same time, we also need to acknowledge the limits of our environment and our planet.By stepping away from our computers, getting to know the places we live in, and connecting with others, we contribute to the public good. We need to recognize the value of these activities, even though they may seem like a waste of time. To me, this calls for a profound shift in the way our societies think and operate
Read on Substack

Ione Ardaiz Osacar

Arantzazulab

Love and Policy. Letters.

Of course, when we extend beyond ourselves, we are confronted with chaos. It is important to recognise that chaos is just what it is. We just have to find our own way to our own effective presence as part of it, so that entry into chaos is a choice and an opportunity to make a difference.
Never underestimate the power of the presence of your full aliveness and how you can be the agent of cultural richness.
Read in the book

Judy Ling Wong CBE

Black Environment Network

Thinkers in Residence

The more you put into, the more you got out of it
Read in the book

Kalle Hellzén

180 Amsterdam / Artist & Designer

Thinkers in Residence

Everything was strange
Read in the book

Lisa Robinson

BBC Media Action

In the name of public good

There's something more in the lore and the relationships in between people. That is important...
Read on Substack

Michelle Baldwin

Community Foundations of Canada, Faculty Governance Leadership Ethics, Huron University College

Thinkers in Residence

A little further into the water
Read in the book

Nick Meehan

VVSSL, Berlin Institute for Sound and Music

Thinkers in Residence

The conversation is not over...
Read in the book

Olivier Bréchard

Learning Planet Institute

In the name of public good

Bringing in the right psychological space is going to be key going forward, to making sure that that we've all really got this space for psychological safety, belonging and motivation and, you know, there are so many messed up people, and we're just so lonely and so confused, including young people, we've got to somehow bring back that sense of community for and say: ‘See: this is your landscape, this is your belonging, this is where you get your local food from’.
A lot of it comes back to land - and land ownership, land management. There's so little creativity and thinking about how could we lock land into the public good, rather than leave it to the whims of the market.
It comes back to the collective and understanding that we're going to have to think beyond our private realm.
I go out into the public realm and therefore I give something that is for others’ good, suspending the thinking about just ourselves and go out and actually give.
Read on Substack

Sarah Prosser

Bioregional Weaving Ireland

Thinkers in Residence

If you can't be dysporic, there's no way you can be fully engaged in the process
Read in the book

Terri Gilbert

Shawoman & Scientific Educator (Brain Science)

In the name of public good

Organisational structure is interesting to me. Why would we model it after the corporate world? (...)
Form drives behaviour. We need to support relational infrastrusture.
Read on Substack

Tracey Robertson

Ontario Trillium Foundation