The Present of the Future (2014/15)

The times of utopias seems to have passed. Already since the 1980s we constantly hear of the end of the ‛grand narratives’. The subsequent enthusiasm for heterogeneity and plurality meanwhile devolved into a condition of fatigue, which in all its repetitions and nostalgias blocks the view of the future. But what is the “present of the future” today?

The third annual theme of the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies asks, which means and strategies artists and scholars pursue today, to gain a radius of operation which rises from the conditions we are faced with – without falling into nostalgic utopianisms or apocalyptic sensationalisms. How do different disciplines create potentials for change, for the imagination of possible futures beyond modernistic idealisms and romanticist projections? How can they contend for new freedoms within the configuration of our tomorrows, beyond the present routines and determinations? Contemporary answers to those questions range from the openness of experimental systems and the inclusion of contingency into scientific proceedings to speculative and fictive approaches in philosophy, art and design.