Drawing in the glow of generative machines: Comics as research method for speculative futures

We – a cartoonist, a geographer, and an ecological economist – present a recent research project crossing comics, cartography, foresight, social geography and ecological economics. While working together on a series of narrative maps of visions for Brussels in 2050, we observed that the graphic productions were testing, complicating and raising questions about the scientific data we had initially intended to illustrate. In this presentation, we first reflect on our interdisciplinary collaboration and discuss the growing interest in using comics as an investigative research method. Comics have a distinctive ability for questioning and grounding data, methods and results, showing both text and context, and situating theory in its social and material conditions of production. We then propose that this is connected to the increasing self-awareness of analogue artistic practices, poetics, and strategies in the context of machine production. We also hypothesise about an emerging "scientification" of comics similar to the current scientification of general literature, where social science approaches and formats, such as fieldwork and field notes, are becoming increasingly prevalent in literary productions. This differs from the expansion of documentary comics that has occurred since the early 21st-century. Finally, we argue that this could transform and revitalise the fields of comics production and studies, as well as future studies.