Notes from “Instructions for Future Conflicts,” a workshop by and with Lena Karson at Untameable Futures (u+, 21 October 2026).
How might we have “better” conflicts in the future? Lena Karson admitted that she came to this question while reading the festival description and letting it resonate with her own practice as an artist researcher working on conflict. Her interest was not in giving answers. It was in asking different questions, after collectively experiencing a practice that could change how we relate to disruption.
Conflict as a tool
Lena works as an artist-researcher, conflict & cultural mediator. Her approach is systemic. Conflict, in this view, is a relational tool helping a system transform: it can disrupt a situation in order to reassemble it, clarify a relationship, or make a state of relation more bearable. It does not have to be resolved at all costs. A relationship can be recalibrated, reconfigured, or even ended, and each of these states are a form of change. Momentary and still mobile.
Lena prefers the term “conflictuality,” which describes the moment when people try, as well as they can, to meet across a disruption. She separates conflict from aggression and violence, which can be versions of the latter, but are not the same thing. She also questioned the pursuit of rational consensus, arguing that trying to stop others from entering into conflict can deny them their standing as equals. She ended this part with a quote from the writer Maggie Nelson in On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint: that the desire to solve a difficulty once and for all can also be a desire to stop being part of it.
Yoko Ono’s instructions
Before starting, Lena set out the working principles: personal autonomy, kindness and no judgment towards others or oneself, active listening, shared responsibility for the speaking space, anonymity, and discretion. Participants were also asked to look around their own physical space and treat it as their « space for conflictuality ». Some stood up or moved. Some kept their distance from the screen.
The workshop borrowed its method from Yoko Ono’s “Instructions for Paintings,” a series of conceptual works that give the viewer short actions to carry out regarding the action of painting. Lena asked participants to write four lines of instructions for a conflict of their own; as if they were addressed to another person involved, the space around or to themselves. The chosen conflict could be personal, relational or political and did not have to be shared with the group. The instructions could be serious, funny, absurd or poetic and constituted a collective document for them to he shared.
What participants noticed
Several participants said the instructions were written for themselves, but also for the other person involved, or for the shared space. One participant said the exercise showed how small disagreements can grow into lasting conflicts once they become difficult to repair, and that an instruction written in advance could have helped them step out before the situation became large.
The group also discussed cultural differences. A participant from a culture where directness is seen as care described how the same frankness can be misread elsewhere. Another recalled a meeting where the group that spoke most freely silenced others, and how an experienced colleague had to explain that quieter styles of turn-taking were needed to enable negotiation.
One participant summed up a common thread: step away from the heat of the moment, deflect attention through humour or poetry, and return when ready. Lena agreed that stepping away is not always avoidance. In that case, channeling an emotion into something physical or active, or taking time to delve into it elsewhere can be an option. She noted that emotions are part of every conflict, and that there are moments when they take over so completely that the other side cannot be heard at all.
Reframing the question
The workshop ended by asking which word in the question “How might we have better conflicts in the future?” participants would like to change. This brought to a new set of questions to explore:
« How might we have better conflicts in the future? »
How might we solve conflicts in the future?
How can we name the different interests that we represent?
How can we learn to share in a better way, rather than convince or dominate?
Let’s have a better conflict.
How might we have equity in conflicts in the future?
Let’s have rich conflicts.
How might we enter a place where it’s fine to have conflicts?
How can we hold different perspectives from a space of curiosity, of different opinions, where we’re OK with being in tension and uncomfortable?
Why not have more constructive conflicts now, to build a better future? (conflict as a tool)
Participants also described spaces that make conflict workable. For example, a school ritual in which children gathered weekly to voice their anger, or a Buddhist monastery in which young students held weekly, noisy debates to get to know each other and to practice holding opposing ideas. In both cases the conflict had a purpose and a space to greet it.
Closing
Lena closed by referring to the way this all converged with her research on creating « spaces for conflictuality ». The question she brought, « How might we have better conflicts in the future? », became a set of other questions that the group could keep spreading.