Unfuturing peace: augmented reality image design for Guerrilla peacebuilding

Abstract

This project explores the potential of image-making in augmented reality (AR) technologies as means of designing sustaining quality peace futures—unfuturing peace, focusing on Ukraine’s heroic defense against Russia’s 2022–2024 full-scale war of aggression as a case study. Employing the methodology of compositional interpretation and the conceptual tool “futures images,” the project theoretically and practically differentiates between defuturing and unfuturing as peace design processes in developing an essay of originally designed marker-based Augmented Reality Posters in Support of Ukraine as demos of sustaining quality peace arrangements. The posters reference the topics of (physical) integrity of Ukrainian symbols, global food security and the security of the LGBTQI+ community in Ukraine. The technological artistic process/outcomes of this AR image-making experiment and their relation to power layouts in peacebuilding form the bases for theorizing how AR-supported futures design in war-affected communities—unfuturing peace—could facilitate “guerrilla peacebuilding.” In outlining theoretical and practical premises of guerrilla peacebuilding, the project intersects Augmented Reality Posters in Support of Ukraine with explorations of guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency efforts leading to the 2016 Havana Peace Agreements in Colombia as well as mobile technologies/power in guerrilla approaches to democratic development.