Thomas Laureyssens

Work

specXcraft

Context: Innoviris Co-create, Brussels; a collaboration between Urban Species, Constant, Natagora and Centre Vidéo Bruxelles · Period: 2022–2024 · My role: workshop development and facilitation, and product design of the interventions, from within Urban Species. The team split the strands between us; I worked mainly with Natagora

The question

Can training a speculative, embodied and materialised imagination make Brussels residents less resigned and more resilient in the face of their city's future and its multiple crises? specXcraft (speculative crafting for un/common futures) started from the hypothesis that the capacity to imagine futures is a pivotal citizen's skill, and that pluralising imaginaries of the future — particularly with underrepresented publics — is a cornerstone of democratic urban action.

What we made

A co-creative, artistic research trajectory combining concepts from science fiction and speculative fabulation with handwork: imagining with your hands, in material. Participants worked with real materials and with science fiction texts, so that a future became something to hold rather than only something to discuss. The trajectory included making sessions with Brussels participants, a Diplomacy Session, the winter symposium Cybioses (life in the future imperfect) and three collective films, later screened at the STS Hub 2025 in Berlin.

What came of it

A 148-page collective publication, in an English and a French edition, written by Giulietta Laki, Greg Nijs, Thomas Laureyssens, Florence Peeraer, Mia Melvaer, Elodie Mugrefya, Hélène Gassmann and Rafaella Houlstan-Hasaerts. Self-published in March 2024 under the Collective Conditions for re-use, so free to copy, adapt and pass on. I did the design.

The power and the necessity of imagination kept intriguing me afterwards. They led me to Imagoria, a very different medium from a workshop with craft at its core, but possibly something that can carry through on a personal level.