Beatrice Ferrara and Leandro Pisano, 2019 https://ruralfuturism.

com

Manifesto of
Rural Futurism
1.  6. 
“Rural futurism” is a challenge raised Different (human and non-human) life
to the current discourses about rurality forms exist and insist on a territory,
as authentic, utopic, anachronistic, any territory, and they are mutually
provincial, traditional and stable, and the implicated in one another. Sometimes,
binaries that support such discourses: they co-exist together peaceably; at
belonging vs. alienation, development vs. other times, they are in conflict with
backwardness. each other. Conflictual coexistences
2. are valuable too, as they generate “grey
A critical approach to rurality is zones” within a rural territory, which
necessary, today more than ever before, can productively challenge any inherited
to imagine other futures for rural notion of “environment”, “nature”, and
communities, territories and places “ecology”. Through its co-existences
beyond the “otherness” vs. “identity” (and conflictual co-existences), the
dichotomy. rural territory can in fact be approached
3. otherwise, leaving aside contemplative,
It becomes apparent that rurality today romantic or decadent clichés about
cannot be seen merely as a geographical “rurality”.
space; rather, it has to be seen as an 7. 
expression of “positionality”, in terms of Even if dominant narratives insist that
an actual political position. rural spaces should be relegated to
4.  a space-time that can only undergo
We need to understand rural areas as involution, there are many practices
complex spaces actively immersed in — theoretical, artistic, agricultural and
the dynamism of encounters, flows and technological — that attest to rurality’s
fluxes of contemporary geographies, and potential resistance.
critically question modern discourses of 8. critically traverse the “border territories”
capitalism and metropolitanism in which “Rural Futurism” is a critical
rural territories are marginalised and perspective, in which multiple points
considered as doomed to oblivion. of view (and listening) converge:
5. art, and techno-culture(s) more
“Rural futurism” addresses the complex specifically, provide new and striking
dynamics between rural territory and ways to rethink what ‘rurality’ is (and
urban space through technoculture, could be). In this way, rural areas
encompassing a range of issues such as become places of experimentation,
“generation” and “time” within local performativity, critical investigation and
communities (depopulation, movement, change. It is possible to create future
resilience and cultural heritage) and the scenarios, starting from the assemblage
peculiar geophysical characteristics of of the seen and the unseen, of human
the place (remoteness, wind, energy, and non-human elements. These
infrastructure and/or lack thereof ). objects, materials, speech, relational
infrastructures and technologies give
form to (and are formed as) specific
modes of governance.
9. 
Through the practice of listening it is
possible to get a sense of the complexity
and dynamics from which the territory
reveals itself in unexpected ways and
different perspectives. This emphasizes
the value and the values of “deep
listening” to feel the different topologies
of a rural territory. Tones, harmonies and
dissonances vibrate while these processes
take place, and that can be registered
through an “acoustemological” approach.
10.
In its materiality, sound invites us to
experience rural locations and abandoned
places as spaces in which to question
our approach to history and landscape,
our sense of living in a specific place
and the relationship that we have with
it. The sound of environments, spaces
and landscapes reveal the challenges
and territorial transformations that
inform the ideological, infrastructural
and biological ecosystems to which
we form a part. In this sense, listening
practices are deployed as a way to
of rural territories, challenging persisting
notions about “inescapable marginality”,
“residuality” and “peripherality”.