Thea Attieh

I have always been interested in futures—not one future but a series of possible futures. Maybe it’s because I would sometimes rather ask questions than answer them. Born and raised in Lebanon, I have long understood that change requires work on multiple fronts that go far beyond the fulfillment of material needs. I ask myself: How can design move beyond an acceptance of tragedy to create speculative futures? How can we imagine a progressive future for Beirut, a city fractured by trauma and war? My project, titled What could be, is not meant to exist as a design proposal but rather emerged from asking questions, answering them, or not answering them at all. The result is a short movie, narrated by multiple voices that reveal what a set of collective futures could be, representing what is there, what remains, and what might fade away and beautiful probable or improbable futures.