Future

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine yourself in the year 2037. How does it feel? Are you panicking or do you still have hope? In case it helps, the only thing that’s certain is that 2037 will come. Everything else is mere conjecture and there are alternatives to all of them: the future as an inspiring empty space that we can shape.

The keyword Future is about visions and utopias, but also with a view to the past. For example, students design their idea of a future school along the lines of Schools of To-Morrow, a classic work about educational reform published in 1915, or they draw inspiration from the utopian Whole Earth Catalog. In the 1960s, it was already inspiring hippies and technophiles – incidentally, near what would later become Silicon Valley.

The future that was yesterday or could be tomorrow – everything revolves around inspiration: Supplemented by talks and interventions, workshops guide us through virtual and physical spaces. Long-aspired productions are attempted, computers are taken apart or smartphones are used for physical relaxation in a #HotPhone massage. In this way, digital learning, cultural history studies and artistic practices combine to create a collective probing of this empty space called the future. Outcome uncertain, inspiration guaranteed.