DisCourse

Description

For those who know, somewhere deep inside the guts of MIT lies an underground oasis for real human connection, and it’s now open for dinner. Introducing The GUT – an unconventional archive of the future where strangers from within the MIT community gather not for status, productivity, or escape, but to share and witness the kinds of stories that leave a lasting mark.

This is no ordinary dinner party. Drawing inspiration from immersive theatre, the series offers a parallel world that is equal parts playful and purposeful – where guests engage with strangers through guided prompts, roles, and rituals. 

At its core, DisCourse is an invitation to the MIT community to reexamine their relationship to socializing, experiment with new ways of being in conversation with one another, and to co-create a collective future grounded in listening, sharing, and mutual understanding

Design Elements

• Mysterious invites that strongly entice the curious to join and actively participate. 
• Immersive worldbuilding in a fictional human archive at the brink of collapse
• Theatrical, semi-structured facilitation and guided rituals help guests hold space for deeper conversations
• A simple technological system for co-creating a spatial artifact which represent and prompt personal experience sharing

Participant Quotes

• “Something special about this place that we've all come to is just being able to be trusting with people that you've never met."
• “The power of like the right set of a new set of rules... We made a new game here but that little different world we created here, it's like a really powerful thing"
• “Being unexpected, that kind of added to the thrill of being here”
• “I think normally in conversation there's some presumption of non vulnerability. You almost don't wanna be too deep in a conversation to make it like kind of weird. But it was nice being intentionally vulnerable.”

The GUT is currently under construction and seeking a new home. For more information about this unusual project and where it's heading, email Cassandra Lee at cass_lee@mit.edu.