MUNA Lab
An innovation journey for a cultural organization in Finland and for Helsinki Design Week
MUNA 2022-2055 is a design fiction film for Nordic Culture Point (link), an institution of the Nordic Council of Ministers which works to support Nordic co-operation so that everyone is able to participate in socio-cultural life on equal terms. The video accompanies an intervention for Helsinki Design Week.
Set in MUNA Lab in Suomenlinna island, Helsinki, Finland, the film follows a group of time travelers passing through the laboratory to explore “The E.G.G.”, the first artifact retrieved in the island that doesn’t belong to the past but to Suomenlinna of 2055.
When two of MUNA’s maritime archaeologists, Annika Bergvik-Forsander and Moa West, found the artifact in one of their daily excavations, their instinct was to call The Time Travel Agency so together they would guide a crew to see more of this artifact and of the society of future Suomenlinna.
Before finding “The E.G.G.”, MUNA specialized in the [past] underwater cultural heritage of the island; this trip documents its transition to also doing future archaeology.
The experience that the time travelers go through reflects contemporary cultural concerns about dystopian futures, the breakdown of imagination, crafting optimistic future narratives, and the alienation of the self.
The film is being watched as a TV commercial in another world.
Motivated by the question “How do we bring innovation and futures design to a cultural organization and their new audience?”, we relied on Palindrome as the future-traveling tool that could bring our clients and their clients safely and playfully into the future. The rest, was getting our clients to create a “container”, a world-building piece from where to keep offering futures later on.
MUNA Lab is the response to Nordic Culture Point’s first quest to use futures design in their programming, towards the creation of other, better futures with its audience.
From Annika Bergvik-Forsander & Moa West:
How do we design an optimistic future?
In a time where emphasis is often put on heavy, negative, and disastrous events and feelings, we need to find a way to flip the script and open up to new possibilities and stories which could be futures to be invested in.
Join us in a workshop around the future on the beautiful Suomenlinna island.
Let the history and imagined artifacts of the fortress make your imagination run free, and come together in this immersive space where we will face future challenges and solutions together.