Glitching the Future | How creative resistance can spark the flame that disrupts Big Tech

In a world where algorithms track our every move and digital platforms define what is seen and valued, it’s easy to feel like the future is already decided. But Glitching the Future reminds us that the code isn’t closed and the future isn’t fixed.

A bold collaboration between ZAM Magazine (Netherlands) and Bubblegum Club (South Africa), Glitching the Future is a creative movement that challenges the dominance of Big Tech through art, design, research, and cultural production. It doesn’t try to "fix" the future, it reimagines it. One glitch at a time.

Why a glitch? Because a glitch interrupts. It forces us to notice what we’ve been trained to ignore. It creates space to reconfigure what’s possible.

As artist and Editor-in-Chief of the Glitching Future online zine, Thembeka Sincuba puts it:

“This work is necessarily incomplete. Yet its importance cannot be overstated. We can’t afford to scroll uncritically. Technology doesn’t just mediate the future—it is actively fabulating it. Glitching the Future is a rare site of speculative repair smashing against the boundaries of control… We are not seeking to fix the future, we’re way ahead—moving in sync with it, glitch by glitch.”

Under the direction of Jamal Nxedlana, Lex Trickett, Aluta Null and Thembeka Sincuba, the project brings together essays, performances, and visual work that challenge the so-called “neutrality” of our digital systems. They ask: What happens when African thought, Afrofeminism, and queer resistance become the drivers of innovation?

The answers come in many forms and these forms begin to take shape in our manifesto and microsite. The manifesto video sets the tone for the new movement while  the microsite serves as a toolkit where audiences can engage with the creative contributions and social feed.

The microsite, manifesto video, and all creative contributions come together as a living, evolving toolkit for disruption. Each element; whether a movement piece, makeup tutorial, essay or visual work, is both inspiration and invitation. They offer different entry points into the act of glitching: challenging norms, shifting narratives, and imagining futures beyond control. This toolkit is not just for looking, it’s for doing. We invite audiences to add their voice and make their own glitches, however big or small.

The creative contributions map out how creativity can disrupt exclusionary systems and inspire change. Disruption is not monolithic, just like resistance, it speaks in many languages. The Glitching the Future movement embraces this diversity of expression, using multiple creative forms to imagine new digital possibilities. From movement and makeup to essays and sound, each contribution offers a unique way of challenging the status quo and opening space for alternative futures. We’ve chosen to highlight just three of the many incredible contributors to offer a glimpse into the depth and range of the project. 

Lethabo Motseleng’s essay explores how Johannesburg’s creative communities use everyday digital tools in inventive, often improvised ways and how the youth shape tech to serve their own cultural and economic realities, the piece affirms the project’s core message: disruption begins where innovation meets necessity.

In New Kyd’s movement and spoken word piece, the body becomes the glitch—refusing control, shifting out of prescribed narratives, and claiming space beyond identity categories.

And with So Delicious, a Johannesburg-based makeup artist, makeup becomes a weapon of disruption.

“We need to talk about the problem in order to be listened to and to create change in this world,” she says. Her face is her canvas, an archive of defiance, softness, imagination. Through her Glitching the Future makeup tutorial challenge, So Delicious invites others to join in: not just to recreate a look, but to express a future shaped by care, not control.

Because in this movement, the glitch isn’t a mistake - it’s a message.

Through dance, essays, makeup, digital zines, and a manifesto video, Glitching the Future shows us what creative disruption looks like when it's rooted in community, critical thought, and joy. It’s not about tech for tech’s sake, it’s about building technologies that reflect us. That hold complexity. That care.

This is the power of cultural production: not only to critique systems, but to imagine alternatives that are built by everyone for everyone. What we build now becomes what we inherit tomorrow. This isn’t just about what tech can do, but who it chooses to serve. It’s time we all became its authors.

This project has been made possible by a grant for internationalisation of the design sector from the Creative Industries Fund NL (Het Stimuleeringsfonds), Het Cultuurfonds, De Vriendenloterij and all the wonderful people who supported the project through our crowdfunding campaign.