as articulated by Ferrara and Pisano (2019), constitutes a conceptual and activist stance that contests entrenched narratives depicting rural territories as static, authentic, or merely nostalgic spaces; instead, it frames these regions as dynamically positioned within global socio-technological flows and ripe for critical reinvention through practices like acoustemology and techno-cultural experimentation, this perspective disrupts dichotomies such as tradition vs. innovation or belonging vs. alienation by proposing rurality not as a passive geographic condition but as a political positionality, an actively negotiated site of coexistence and transformation, this approach emphasizes the mutual entanglement of human and non-human agencies, embracing both harmony and tension as generative forces that produce "grey zones" of environmental redefinition beyond conventional ecological paradigms, a key methodological contribution is the acoustic turn, where deep listening uncovers latent narratives, affective resonances, and territorial complexities that remain obscured in visual or textual modalities, by foregrounding sound as material and epistemic—a tool for navigating and understanding social and spatial shifts—rural futurism reveals how auditory practices can expose ideological and infrastructural dynamics embedded within landscapes, a salient example includes using sonic interventions in abandoned or marginal spaces to interrogate historical silence and spatial residuality, thereby converting perceived "peripheries" into critical laboratories of change, through this lens, technoculture and artistic practice become agents of resistance and invention, positioning rural areas not as backward remnants but as vibrant ecologies of experimentation with the capacity to model alternative futures and governance forms that are more inclusive and situated, thus, rural futurism proposes a radical revaluation of non-metropolitan life-worlds, urging a shift from romanticized views to politically charged, multisensory engagements with rural space and time.
Ferrara, B. & Pisano, L. (2019). Manifesto of Rural Futurism.
