Future Matter #1  

"ECHO" 

Written by Callum Copley

Narrated by Daan Couzijn 

Sound and Mixing by Remco Hazewinkel 

Graphic design by Marick Roy

Echo is a work of speculative fiction set in present-day Amsterdam. Through a series of recurring encounters and chance happenings, it tells a story that at its core is a problematization of the notion of individuality and subjectivity. Inspired by Denise Ferreira da Silva’s thinking in ‘On Difference Without Separability’, Echo attempts to pick up some of the questions raised—rhetorical or otherwise—regarding the conceptual (and literal) possibilities held in discoveries around Quantum Physics. Rather than a speculative future—Echo is a provocation. It is an attempt to use non-classical physics to question the materiality of consciousness and to pose a radical reimagining of agency, relationality, empathy and interdependency. It is an attempt to think through what it means to be connected to someone; what sort of responsibilities does this entail? And how can pushing these dynamics to their extremes reveal what it might mean for new types of being with one and other?

Callum Copley is a researcher and writer based between Amsterdam and the UK, examining the political and cultural entanglements of emerging technologies. Through games, film, audio and text, his work explores fiction as a method for both proposing alternative futures as well as enacting radical change in the present. He teaches at the Critical Inquiry Lab (MA) at Design Academy Eindhoven, and the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, where he also graduated from the Critical Studies masters program in 2018. He is co-founder of ‘Schemas of Uncertainty’ an ongoing research initiative exploring the role of prediction in a contemporary digitized society. He is editor of ‘Reworlding: Ramallah, Short Science Fiction Stories from Palestine’ (Onomatopee, 2019), author of the novella ‘φιλία’ (2018) and of the collection of short stories ‘Twitchers, Mucklarks and Gravediggers’ (2017).

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