Pradl hält z’samm: Community, Belonging, and Boundaries(Innsbruck, 2055)
“For us, for our children, for our future.” The slogan on this home-printed flyer feels familiar. So does the fear behind it. Created as a sensory artefact (visual, tactile) for the Walk the Futures: Innsbruck Edition in 2025. Artist: Suzanne Whitby.
Overview
This Field Note showcases a speculative community flyer created for Walk the Futures: Innsbruck Edition, exploring a Collapse future in which scarcity, insecurity, and fear of outsiders shape local identities and social order.
Walk the Futures is an immersive, multi-sensory walkshop exploring alternative futures for Innsbruck.
About this artefact
Title:
Pradl hält z’samm (“Pradl Sticks Together”)
Year: 2055 (imagined)
Artist: Suzanne Whitby
Created: 2025
About the flyer
Distributed as a mock community notice from the Innsbruck district of Pradl, the flyer reflects a world where self-sufficiency and protectionism have replaced collaboration and global exchange. It celebrates local pride, yet its slogans echo darker histories, drawing participants into a visceral confrontation with how easily “care for our own” can slide into exclusion and control.
On reading the flyer, you might notice:
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Language and tone: The bilingual format (German and English) mirrors everyday life in Innsbruck, grounding the fiction in cultural familiarity. Phrases like “Pradl zuerst” and “Keep Pradl for Pradler” evoke nationalism and boundary-making.
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Everyday normality: Events such as the Schützen Sommerfest and Erntedankgottesdienst reinforce the illusion of normal community life, even as the context darkens.
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Echoes of the past: The use of local dialect (“Bisch a Tiroler, bisch a Mensch”) links contemporary collapse to memories of authoritarian rhetoric, prompting reflection on historical and ethical responsibility.
This artefact often provokes strong emotional reactions, including discomfort, anger, and sadness, which are intentionally surfaced and held during facilitated reflection.
In Walk the Futures, participants encounter this flyer as a tactile object in the “Collapse” world. Some recognise its tone before reading; others are startled by how plausible it feels. In conversation, they explore how scarcity reshapes ethics, how inclusion and exclusion are negotiated, and what resilience means when systems fail.
The flyer’s ordinariness is its power, a reminder that collapse can feel local, reasonable, even neighbourly.
Bring sensory artefacts to your space
We create immersive artefacts that turn possible futures into lived experiences.
Through speculative flyers, newspapers, and community ephemera, we help audiences feel and reflect on social change, not just think about it.
If you’d like to explore participatory futures storytelling for exhibitions, learning programmes, or public dialogue, we’d love to collaborate.
Just curious? That’s fine, too. Let’s chat.