Living the Future Now: Vision Lab's Laboratory of Belonging
Publication information:
Abstract
What if belonging isn't something we build incrementally — but something we inhabit immediately by living a future society in the present? Vision Lab is a socially-engaged global contemplative arts and education platform operating as a "laboratory of transmission," channeling lineages from Black Mountain College, Naropa, the San Francisco Renaissance, and mystical countercultural traditions into collaborative world-making. Vision Lab was founded at Harvard Divinity School in 2017 and has offered research and collaborative workshops and projects through Harvard's CSWR, Radcliffe Institute, and MIT, as well as participating in the PES conferences for the past two years. This interactive presentation invites participants into Vision Lab's radical operating model: radically diverse, non-hierarchical, transpersonal creativity that generates belonging through shared artistic and spiritual practice. We explore how contemplative arts create irresistible futures — and how communities practicing "love in action" ('ishq) can beckon others across the threshold of possibility.
Presenter Biography
Kythe Heller is a poet, artist, and scholar holding a 2025 Th.D/Ph.D from Harvard University in Comparative Studies in Religion and Art, Film, and Visual Studies/Critical Media Practice. Her books include Firebird (a collection of poetry nominated for the Massachusetts Book Award), The Soul Conveys Itself in Shadow (an edited collection of literary translations and winner of the IPPY's Bronze Award), critical studies published in Cambridge UP and Akron Series edited collections, and work in peer-reviewed journals. She is the creative director of Vision Lab, a socially-engaged global platform cultivating the contemplative arts, research, and education, founded at Harvard Divinity School. She teaches on the faculty of the Language and Thinking Program at Bard College.