This text was submitted for the visual essay category of the Fall 2022 issue of the journal LA+ (16, "Speculation"), but was not accepted. The images that were to accompany the text were previously shared on this blog here (1), here (2), and here (3); a few samples are also included below.
When everything persists despite the obvious need for change, when failures replicate themselves without interruption, and when we cannot even imagine alternatives to our current situation, then we are surely in a state of stagnation. And stagnation is never just neutral perpetual sameness. Instead, stagnation always implies decay. Stagnation is slow death. If we find ourselves in such a state, then the solution is obvious: resuscitation. On TV, resuscitation sometimes takes the form of a handsome prince kissing a sleeping beauty, an act so gentle and loving. But in real life, resuscitation usually requires a more aggressive intervention, one that in a different context could be considered an act of violence, such as the electric shock of a defibrillator frantically shoved into a patient's chest.
Kuwait is experiencing a period of stagnation. The landscapes of Kuwait—its patchy downtown, its repetitive suburbs, its flat desert, its Gulf waters—have not been reimagined for decades. There is no societal expectation that these landscapes will or should change. Even simple and sensible improvements remain outside the realm of possibility. We cannot imagine a more green and pedestrian friendly downtown. We cannot imagine suburbs more diverse in building type and resident background. We cannot imagine a less trampled and littered desert, richer in biodiversity and always beautiful. We cannot imagine our water being less polluted and its depths more bountiful. And this deficient imagination of ours is also lacking in the other direction. Given the current economic, environmental, and humanitarian challenges the country is facing, it is baffling why most of us cannot visualize the rapid and disastrous transformations that our urban, rural, and natural landscapes can undergo in the near future. Regardless of the evidence, there seems to be a widespread expectation that things will essentially stay the same.
The aim of this visual project is to jolt Kuwaiti society out of its current state of imaginative stagnation. Each image speculates about one possible future for a Kuwaiti landscape. They allow the viewer to 'see' and 'believe' that dramatic change is possible. To achieve this, images had to do two things. First, they had to be instantly recognizable as being in Kuwait, and no other place. Second, they had to be created with enough proficiency to look realistic; even if for just a second, the viewer had to struggle with parsing apart the real from the speculative. Understood as such, each image can be seen as presenting the viewer with a question, such as: what if the desert reclaimed the city? What if rising water invaded Kuwait's suburbs? What if a giant sink hole swallowed several city blocks? And on the brighter side: what if the water was utilized as a source of renewable energy? What if open spaces in suburbs were turned into safe and welcoming camps for the world's refugees?
Ultimately, the desired effect of the images is not just to allow the viewer to imagine new possibilities for Kuwait's future, but to encourage them to participate in deciding which of the possibilities, whether illustrated in the images or still unimagined, will become the new reality.
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