The Futuring Lab (2023) was an experimental exhibition and research platform that invited artists, designers, scientists, and students to imagine the near and distant futures of life on Earth. Installed in the University of Massachusetts Design Building Gallery, the exhibition transformed the space into a working studio-laboratory– a hybrid between a think tank, art installation, and classroom. Rather than presenting finished works, The Futuring Lab emphasized process, speculation, and collaboration. Visitors were invited to participate in five days of events that explored contemplative, inclusive, interactive futuring.

The exhibition gathered a range of interdisciplinary voices, including contributions from architecture, art, and geoscience, as well as speculative writing and sustainability. Through interactive events, participants explored the climate cycle, Afro and Indigenous futurist studies, playback theater performances, a poetry slam, Deep Listening, and much more. The lab format allowed for ideas to be tested spontaneously, echoing the iterative nature of both scientific experimentation and artistic research.

Organized by Sandy Litchfield, in collaboration with numerous students, activists, and colleagues, the project set the stage for Y3K: On Distant Keys (2024). It introduced key concepts that would later expand into the fictional world of Ondacka– a sentient archipelago envisioned through maps, glyphs, and speculative legal frameworks.

Throughout its run, The Futuring Lab served as a space for inquiry and dialogue, hosting workshops, performances, and open discussions that blurred the boundary between exhibition and classroom. It asked: how might imagination itself become a scientific instrument? In its mix of rigor and play, the Lab proposed that futures are not just predicted, but practiced, collaboratively imagined, and continually redefined through acts of care and creativity.