Critical Ambivalence

The evaluative stance Antikythera's scenario work sets for itself. Hemispherical Stacks says the scenarios it needs "should also be neither really utopian nor dystopian but rather a bit of both, more ambivalent than activist," and the journal's definition of Scenario Fiction repeats the rule: provocations, not prescriptions, "meant to be ambivalent rather than activist." Bratton gave the fuller form at the program's launch: utopian speculative design offers "performative utopian wishes," dystopian design codifies an "official dystopia," and the ideal project is one its makers are "critically ambivalent" about — unsure whether its coming true would be the best or worst thing, a pharmakon whose resolution is suspended on the bet that undecidable projects generate more durable ideas. Companion to Scenario Fiction and Self-Depresentation.