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Alternative Unknowns, 2015

The Extrapolation Factory, in partnership with New York City Emergency Management, assembled a group of New York City-based practitioners to create a simulator for pre-enacting possible emergency scenarios. The team was invited to a conversation with NYC Emergency Management, focusing on critical issues facing the city. The team members used the content of the discussion to inspire a fictional emergency script, seven speculative artifacts for emergency preparedness and a theatrical simulation space for enacting an emergency. The objects created were installed in the simulation space, which served as a stage for a series of four improv performances by actors who interpreted these emergency preparedness objects and the multiple potentials for how they could be used.

See more documentation on Flickr.
Research interests
Infrastructure imagination · Participatory futures · Simulation
Project credits
A project by: Chris Woebken and Elliott P. Montgomery
Design assistant: Emma Verhoeven
Simulation script: Tim Maughan
Artists and designers: Nanu Al-Hamad, Isaac Blankensmith, Fabien Caperan, Fernando Cremades, Matt Delbridge, Sam Hart, Dr. Natalie Jeremijenko, Matt Jones, Clay Kippen, Lost Cause Inc. and Miriam Simun
Performers: Kevin Alvir, Zenzele Cooper, John Peery and Candace Thompson

Commissioned by: apexart, through its Open Call
Curated by: Chris Woebken and Elliott P. Montgomery
Partner: New York City Emergency Management

Special thanks: Nicola Twilley, for connecting us with apexart



Detail: xRats by the Environmental Health Clinic (Natalie Jeremijenko)

Alternative Unknowns simulation room at apexart, with speculative preparedness objects used by performers to rehearse possible New York City emergencies.

Speculation in City Government, roundtable at apexart, 2015

On 11 December 2015, the exhibition’s curators, artists and performers reconvened with New York City Emergency Management at apexart to discuss what speculative design and improvisation could contribute to emergency planning.

The performances revealed how an object’s intended purpose could shift in use. A home-testing kit became an instrument of policing and quarantine, raising questions about trust, authority and access to care. Actors described responding under pressure, piecing together unfamiliar instructions and taking cues from one another. Their interpretations exposed the distance between a planned service and the way someone might experience it.

Emergency managers connected these scenes to practical questions: who delivers information, how it is received, and whether services could reach people at home instead of requiring them to travel to a central location. The conversation also opened onto larger questions about urban infrastructure, ecological relationships and the role of public institutions in imagining different futures.

A productive tension ran through the discussion: could an exhibition help communicate existing preparedness strategies, or also change how those strategies are developed? By bringing institutional knowledge into contact with performance and public interpretation, Alternative Unknowns created a setting in which assumptions could be questioned, unintended consequences explored and new approaches considered together.

Roundtable details and participants ↗

Exhibitions & related material

Exhibitions & public programs

  • · ExhibitionAlternative Unknownsapexart, New York, 5 November–19 December. Curated by Elliott P. Montgomery and Chris Woebken.
  • · Public programSpeculation in City Governmentapexart, New York, 11 December. Roundtable with NYC Emergency Management.

Articles, publications & talks