Future Present and Coastnatural Trail
Headlands Center for the Arts · 2015
Led by Chris Woebken
A workshop and a fictional trail pop-up, run as one process. Participants invented postnatural species in an evening workshop, and those species became a field guide and a set of markers on a real park trail.
Events
- 24 March 2015 · Future Present, Fieldwork Session workshop, Project Space studio, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA. Program record ↗
- 19 April 2015 · Coastnatural Trail, fictional trail pop-up at the Spring Open House, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA. Field guide (PDF) ↗ · Video ↗
Process
- Workshop. Future Present was a three-evening Fieldwork Session series at Headlands, and Chris Woebken led the third evening in his Project Space studio. After a presentation on prototyping possible futures, including work by the Extrapolation Factory, participants worked through a series of speculative prompts to produce a large-scale exquisite corpse, crossing current biotech research with species already living in the Marin Headlands.
- Field guide. The hybrid species were placed on the park map and written into a fictional 2041 corporate field guide, assembled from real geology field trip texts (credited below), so the deep history of the coastline and its possible futures sit side by side.
- Trail. For the Spring Open House, markers went up along the park trail, and visitors took copies of the guide to hike the Headlands after their studio visit.
Coastnatural Trail
Team Building Field Trip, Marin Headlands, 04/19/2041
Coastnatural Trail is a field guide from the future. Dated 19 April 2041, it leads a group of Genentech employees on a team-building hike through the Marin Headlands, stopping at rock formations and the species that live among them. Some of those species are familiar. Others were introduced into the park as spontaneous or intentional hybrids, species that biotechnology might plausibly produce, described in the upbeat language of genetic rescue and ecosystem revitalization.
The project asks what a national park is meant to preserve once its species can be engineered, and who ends up leading the tour.
Made in 2015, the guide reads differently now that biotech companies market “functional de-extinction” and promise to undo extinction.
Credits
Workshop, field guide and trail: Chris Woebken
Species concepts: participants in Future Present, Headlands Center for the Arts, 24 March 2015
Host: Headlands Center for the Arts
Research: visits to the Prelinger Library, San Francisco
Geology text compiled and adapted from: California Department of Conservation, Special Publication 119, Geologic Field Trips in Northern California; Mary Leech, “Geology of the Marin Headlands and the Half Moon Bay Coast,” California Rocks! (GEO 116, Continuing Studies, Stanford University); William P. Elder, Geology of the Golden Gate Headlands, National Park Service, Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
The guide interleaves these real descriptions of the Headlands’ rocks and landforms with fictional entries on the hybrid species. Genentech appears as a fictional sponsor and had no involvement in the project.