Workshops offer a powerful way to explore speculative thinking. Since participants already engage deeply with their own practices, structured sessions can help externalize their cognitive frameworks—revealing how they perceive, connect, and imagine possible worlds.

Ziyang’s workshop was particularly illuminating. By deconstructing reality into interconnected dimensions—ecological, technological, social—he demonstrated how systems influence one another and co-create the world. This method aligns with speculative world-building, where hypothetical scenarios (often rooted in present conditions) serve as mirrors, critiques, or provocations.

Worlding (after Donna Haraway and Ursula K. Le Guin) treats reality not as static, but as an ongoing, pluralistic process—one that we actively shape through narrative and imagination. In this framework, every speculative exercise becomes an act of world-making, prompting us to ask: What relationships sustain this world? What hidden logics govern it? These questions align with diegetic prototypes (Julian Bleecker’s term), where fictional artifacts—a map, a tool, a ritual—materialize abstract ideas, rendering them tangible for critique, iteration, or even subversion. Meanwhile, critical fabulation (Saidiya Hartman) pushes further, reimagining silences in dominant histories (past, present, or future) to confront erased perspectives and rehearse alternative possibilities. Together, these approaches transform speculation from mere fantasy into a method for probing, disrupting, and reconfiguring the worlds we inhabit—and those we might yet build.

Additionally, group-based workshops are highly effective, as they encourage collective creation and discussion. One particularly inspiring experience was participating in Jeong Ok’s curatorship workshop, where we were assigned different scenarios to collaboratively decide what to include in a hypothetical exhibition. Through brainstorming, we developed curatorial concepts as a group, then paired up to deepen the conversation through focused dialogue.

Another memorable session was Ho Rui An’s workshop, which explored the history of intelligence through technology. We began by reflecting on significant technological news events we remembered—such as the Tamagotchi craze, the Y2K bug panic, and the temporary ban of ChatGPT. Sharing our diverse perspectives led to fascinating discussions. For example, when talking about Y2K, someone mentioned how scams emerged in Hong Kong, with people selling fake “Y2K survival pills” to the elderly. This prompted the Hong Kong government to launch public awareness campaigns clarifying that the Y2K bug was not an actual virus. These exchanges revealed how the same event could be interpreted and experienced in vastly different ways.

What we discovered is that regardless of the text we inserted, it had to navigate varying forms of authoritarian surveillance and regulation—a phenomenon not limited to modern contexts. Even during the Tang Dynasty, policing systems operated under similar logics, and parallels can be drawn to historical regimes in Korea and Indonesia. This reminded me of how regions collectively influence one another, particularly in East Asia.

An intriguing example of this cross-regional interplay lies in the coincidental timing of Leonardo da Vinci and Tang Yin’s lives—two iconic artists who flourished during the same historical period despite being continents apart. This synchronicity raises fascinating questions about how cultural and intellectual movements emerge across interconnected regions, making such comparative discussions particularly compelling.

The phenomenon aligns with Robert K. Merton’s concept of ‘multiples’ in intellectual history, where similar innovations emerge independently across cultures. Historians like Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s ‘connected histories’ framework might examine how commercial expansion along Eurasian trade routes created comparable conditions for artistic innovation in Renaissance Florence and Ming Dynasty Suzhou. Meanwhile, James Elkins’ global art history specifically compares how both artists developed new painting techniques (sfumato and ink-play respectively) responding to newly urbanized, consumer-driven art markets. These theories collectively suggest that such coincidental developments are not mere accidents, but manifestations of deeper structural parallels in how societies cultivate artistic innovation during periods of economic and technological transformation.

Yet workshops also face constraints. Time limits may curtail deep dives into each participant’s thinking, while concerns about reputation can inhibit openness. Adapting formats—like shifting to open Q&As—can help, fostering real-time refinement of ideas as projects evolve. These challenges, however, are part of the larger negotiation: how to balance structure with spontaneity, individual voice with collective discovery, and speculative freedom with grounded critique.