Master Class THE ART OF ASSEMBLING WORLDS: A Laboratory of DIY Cosmologies and Storytelling by Vanina Saracino

“This five-day masterclass approaches artistic practice as a laboratory for speculative thinking. It explores how artistic and curatorial methods can operate as forms of worldbuilding, serving as tools for assembling relations, testing scenarios, and imagining alternative futures.

In The Language of the Night (1989), science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin describes “DIY cosmologies” as personal or collective world-systems invented to make sense of reality. Today, imaginative storytelling, often intersecting with scientific inquiry, has become an important strategy within contemporary art and curatorial practice. Artists increasingly employ such narrative frameworks to question dominant structures of knowledge and power, including anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism, economic extraction, and technological acceleration.

In these cosmologies, the future is not approached as prediction but as a diagnostic tool. Hypothetical scenarios illuminate the tensions and asymmetries of the present by extrapolating them into possible worlds. By imagining societies shaped by intensified versions of current conditions (whether ecological collapse, algorithmic governance, authoritarian systems, or deepening inequalities), artists can reveal the underlying dynamics of the moment we inhabit and explore alternative trajectories.

The masterclass is grounded in posthuman and post-anthropocentric thought, engaging with thinkers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Donna Haraway, and Lynn Margulis, among others. Drawing from feminist science fiction and climate fiction (cli-fi), the course merges speculative storytelling with artistic research and curatorial methodologies. Together, these approaches offer tools for constructing shared cosmologies and reconsidering how worlds are imagined, narrated, and inhabited.

Each day combines visual lectures, screenings of video artworks, readings, group discussions, and collective exercises. Participants will engage with artistic practices that construct hypothetical environments through narrative, research, and systemic thinking. Works by contemporary artists and curators, alongside short stories from science fiction literature, will serve as case studies for understanding how art can imagine and prototype alternative realities.

Through collaborative activities, participants will experiment with speculative writing, scenario building, and visual mapping techniques to develop their own future worlds. Over the course of the week, the group will collectively assemble a conceptual atlas of futures: a shared map of cosmologies, scenarios, and environments. The aim of the masterclass is not the production of finished artworks, but the development of methodologies that participants can carry back into their own artistic practices. ” (Text by courtesy of Vanina Saracino)

Day 1
9:30 AM Reception at the BAI
INTRODUCTION: ART AS WORLDMAKING

Morning Session:

Reception and Introductions: The day begins with a welcome and introduction by Vanina Saracino, presenting her curatorial and research-based practice, with a focus on artistic worldbuilding and more-than-human perspectives. Participants are invited to introduce themselves, their practices, and their interest in speculative thinking and storytelling.

Lecture and Discussion: Art as Worldbuilding: An introductory lecture situates the course within feminist science fiction, posthuman thought, and curatorial methodologies. The session introduces key concepts such as:

• DIY cosmologies (Ursula K. Le Guin)
• Situated knowledge (Donna Haraway)
• More-than-human perspectives
• Curating as assembling relations

The group will discuss how artistic practices can function as tools for constructing worlds rather than representing them.

LUNCH (1-hour break)

Afternoon Session:

Screening and Discussion: Viewing and discussion of selected video artworks focusing on how artists construct narrative environments and speculative realities.

Exercise on Mapping Frictions: Participants begin with an individual exercise identifying a “friction” in the present (social, ecological, technological, personal). Through guided prompts, they will expand this friction into a broader system.

Collective Exercise: First Cosmologies: Working in small groups, participants begin to assemble initial speculative worlds based on these frictions.

Group Discussion: The day concludes with a short group discussion and individual notes, establishing the foundations for the week.

Day 2
STORYTELLING AS METHOD: CONSTRUCTING COSMOLOGIES

Morning Session:

Lecture: Science Fiction as a Tool for Thinking: This session focuses on storytelling as methodology rather than genre. Topics include:

• Ursula K. Le Guin and the Carrier Bag Theory
• Science fiction as descriptive rather than predictive
• Narrative as a container of relations
• Feminist and ecological storytelling

Reading and Discussion: Close reading of short science fiction texts and excerpts. Participants discuss how narrative structures shape worlds, values, and relations.

LUNCH (1-hour break)

Afternoon Session:

Screening and Discussion: Video works that foreground narrative, voice, and speculative storytelling.

Writing Exercise: Field Notes from a Possible World: Participants write short speculative texts (field notes, fragments, descriptions) from within the worlds they began on Day 1.

Collective Development: Groups expand their cosmologies through writing, dialogue, and feedback.

Reflection: Discussion on how storytelling transforms perception and artistic thinking.

Day 3
MORE-THAN-HUMAN WORLDS: ECOLOGIES, ENERGY, RELATIONS

Morning Session:

Lecture: Posthuman and Ecological Thinking. Introduction to key ideas from:

• Donna Haraway (sympoiesis, tentacular thinking)
• Lynn Margulis (symbiosis, holobionts)
• Alternative understandings of energy and interdependence

Focus on decentering the human and rethinking relations.

Screening and Discussion: Artworks engaging with ecological systems, nonhuman agency, and planetary thinking.

LUNCH (1-hour break)

Afternoon Session:

Worldbuilding exercise: Participants are introduced to a common speculative premise and invited to develop a system-world accordingly. Working in new groups, they explore:

• how life is organized
• what changes in social structures
• what new values emerge

Focus Exercise (art in this world): Participants develop ideas around:

• how art operates in this world
• what forms it takes
• what it does

Reflection: Group discussion on how artistic practice shifts within different cosmologies.

Day 4
ASSEMBLING WORLDS: MAPPING AND STRUCTURING FUTURES

Morning Session:

Lecture: Curating as Worldbuilding: This session focuses on curatorial methodologies as tools for assembling worlds:

• constellations and relations
• framing and context
• temporality and infrastructure
• exhibitions as speculative environments

Screening and Discussion: Examples of artistic and curatorial projects that construct systems, environments, or speculative infrastructures.

LUNCH (1-hour break)

Afternoon Session:

Visual Mapping Workshop: Participants translate their speculative worlds into visual and conceptual maps:

• relations between elements
• flows of energy, matter, or power
• spatial or temporal structures

Collective Assembly: All groups contribute to a shared conceptual atlas of futures, assembling a collective map across projects.

Reflection: Discussion on how mapping changes understanding and articulation of worlds.

Day 5
PRESENTATION AND REFLECTION: SHARING WORLDS

Morning Session:

Final Development: Participants refine their projects:

• texts
• maps
• scenarios

Presentations: Each group presents their speculative world, focusing on:

• its internal logic
• its relations and systems
• the role of art within it

LUNCH (1-hour break)

Afternoon Session:

Group Discussion: Collective reflection on:

• different approaches to worldbuilding
• recurring themes and divergences
• how these methods relate to participants’ practices

Closing Conversation: Final discussion on how participants can integrate these methodologies into their ongoing artistic work. The course concludes with a reflection on the conceptual atlas of futures developed collectively.