Every year, Peclers Paris brings together experts from all horizons – futurists, sociologists, semiologists and strategists – to identify the weak signals of the world’s future major evolutions. The stirrings of new aspirations, beliefs, relationships with oneself and with others, which will change the consumer landscape in the short/medium term. This study then feeds both our consumer intelligence work and our trend forecasting (aesthetics and product uses), around six pillars: belief, nature, hedonism, identities, science and space-time. Extract from the new CONCERTATION PROSPECTIVE, Creative Clatter (“Beliefs” chapter), a review of new creative approaches which, through hybridization, seek to reconcile cultures to solve challenges and propose desirable futures.
EVOLUTION: FROM AN ATTEMPT TO RECOUNT THE COMMONS TO THE TEMPTATION OF SUBVERSIVE SELF-FULFILMENT
The desire to rebuild society through a dynamic, collective rally has gradually been replaced by a more individual quest for meaning. Narratives from fiction or the near past function less as solutions for redefining a possible commonality, and more as foundations for short-term imaginations. In an ongoing quest to amplify pleasure and celebration, individuals are turning to any means capable of breathing life and substance back into a daily routine of crisis after crisis.
The norms and limits traditionally constitutive of what is considered “real” are overturned. Subversion becomes a philosophy that influences the creation of new imaginaries and utopias. The search for new imaginaries to counter traditional ideals of good taste and awaken “bland ambient reality” has become radicalized. Any means of invigorating reality and restoring belief in the viability of the world seems a good thing. Through fertile creativity, new, beneficial collective imaginations are emerging. An invitation to shake up the founding narratives of the contemporary world: work as a condition for success, seriousness and rigor as tools for societal transformation, the necessary separation of opposites, of the real and the imaginary.
MACRO-TREND 1: PACIFYING CREATIONS
If it’s difficult to take a positive view of the future, it’s because our imaginations seem to be blocked. Science fiction, once fertile material for anticipation (CONCERTATION PROSPECTIVE Croyance-2022), now seems too firmly rooted in our reality to help us project ourselves into a desirable future.
So, in order to conjure up futures we don’t yet know exist, we need to explore new solutions and change the way we look at the world. The hybridization of imaginary worlds that, it seems, should never have met, enables us to renew the languages of creativity. Cultural hybridization, hybridization of opposites, hybridization of references, are all ways of reconciling what seemed different to create a new common language.
Mixing references from Indian culture with those from science fiction, Prateek Arora develops original imagery. Renewing the fields of creativity through the hybridization of differences, he draws the contours of new imaginary worlds where everything still seems possible.
KEY TREND 1: ATLAS OF UNREALITY
If it sometimes seems that “everything has already been done”, and that our society is lagging behind in reconnecting with common foundations of belief, we urgently need to change our relationship with creation and go beyond the apparently possible. To go beyond the ordinary, to imagine beyond the existing, we need to start by classifying collective imaginations. By grouping them together, it will then be possible to shake up their boundaries. Hybridization of references, the meeting of opposites, creative speculation, the hijacking of reality… these are the ways to go beyond what already exists and create new, resolutely creative worlds.
With the deployment of AI, unexpected imaginary worlds are appearing, and the field of creativity is opening up to as many people as possible. Through the Atlas project, the Nomic AI company is analyzing the content of 6.4 million generated images to produce a map of collective imaginations in which to navigate. Allowing us to see what connects us, the search for what exists invites us to imagine what is not yet there. Creation becomes a tool for collective iteration.
A science of imaginary solutions, Pataphysics values the anomalous and the strange for their ability to advance discovery. The exhibition is designed to “open the doors to an additional universe”, guiding visitors through a hypnotic navigation to the heart of a potential Paris. Creations based on opposites, objects of no use, Parisian chimeras and fakes installed as if they were real, renew the fields of creativity and place the impossible at the heart of territories to be explored.
KEY TREND 2: FERTILE INTERSECTIONALITY
Intersectionality (in sociology, the term refers to the situation of people who simultaneously suffer several forms of discrimination in a given society), previously analyzed in terms of its importance for the construction of individual identities (cf. CONCERTATION PROSPECTIVE/ Identity – 2022), is becoming a creative force. The superimposition of identities and cultures calls for recognition of the multiplicity of points of view. Somewhere between art and activism, communities are moving into unexpected territory and, in opposition to cultural appropriation (the unacknowledged theft of cultural relics from an oppressed people), are celebrating cultural appreciation. The result is alternative, more committed cultures.
By giving a physical space to often unspoken personal stories, it appears possible to experience a collective human adventure. Supported by lifestyle brand Maison Château Rouge, the Union de la Jeunesse Internationale is a cultural center in the heart of the former Tati department store, a symbol of the 18th arrondissement of Paris. Designed to remind men and women what it means to be human, the center values diasporic cultures and their cross-fertilization with contemporary fashions..
Cultural blends are the foundation of many communities and have led to the emergence of new cosmogonies. The exhibition pays tribute to the creativity of Louisiana’s African-Americans through Black Indians parades. Powerful social markers, these celebrations carry the memory of slave ancestors and Amerindian communities. Treated with awareness and respect, it seems that the hybridization of cultures can give life to a celebration of differences.
HOW TO EXPLOIT THIS MACRO-TREND
- RETAIL
Work with a variety of artists, hybridizing their universes and transforming points of sale in an immersive and surprising way. Invite consumers to meet these artists through physical events.
- COMMUNICATION
Using Artificial Intelligence, invite the community to submit their own creations, group them together and make them visible by creating an online atlas.
- PRODUCT
Use Artificial Intelligence to facilitate the first stages of product creation (ideation, first sketches…) and to decompartmentalize creativity by hybridizing unexpected references.
PROSPECTIVE VISION: FOR WHOM, WHY AND HOW
Put at the service of brands, foresight feeds creativity and invites us to think, depending on the sector of activity, about how to respond to the changing values of our society, while always cultivating its uniqueness.
Every year, Peclers Paris brings together a panel of experts from all walks of life for a Concertation Prospective, which then takes the form of a detailed document, our bible of singular futures. We then invite our partners to share it with their employees in the form of interactive, collaborative workshops: Prospective Days. Brand strategists and industry experts from the fashion, beauty, design and consumer goods sectors can then support you in appropriating these trends and transforming them into proprietary levers.
To find out more and immerse yourself in other dynamics, don’t hesitate to contact us: