About us
re:future lab is a mission driven institute for art and future design and a platform for change. We research, enact and facilitate alternative futures through artistic and systemic intervention.
Our vision—We believe in hope. We envision new futures. Change is a process of incubation and catalysis.
In the light of the upheavals of the pivotal epoch we live in, there is an urgency for radical change. Change is not only the ownership of artists, experts, futurologists, politicians, it is within the reach of individuals, institutions, and corporates —and the civil society at large—.
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We may have great dreams, but we are pragmatical dreamers. As a counter-model to modern heroic myths, we open the frame for tangible fictions of co-existence:
This is a space we call HOLITOPIA®.
Our mission—We operate through a heuristic practice-base research to equip change agents with future ideas, knowledge and skills.
Context art and design are parallel vehicles for cultural practice, political action and research.
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Out of an urge to reconcile affective perception and logic, our activities are dialogical, critical and exploratory. They strive for creative empowerment and articulate around a triple stream:
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RESEARCH. We detect the mutational factors, phenomena, signals, trends and assumptions wherever they happen.
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ENACT. We stage exhibitions and real labs infused with new narratives and immersive, affective, emotionalised and participatory formats.
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EDUCATION. We equip individuals (citizens), institutions and corporates with a set of versatile tokens for fresh thinking and practices.
The Future needs to be something else.
This is a blueprint to viable futures.
Our method—We infuse and deliver all our programs with EMBARKING FUTURES®
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The EMBARKING FUTURES® meta-method combines two pillars: Context Art & Future Design.
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Context Art is a new form of artistic practice that brings together art and non-art contexts to engage with the social construction of reality. By using methods of contextualisation, Context Artists become agents of social processes, partisans of the real. Research-based, provocative, purposive, experimental and participatory, Context Art transcends specific media to reveal alternative narratives.
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Future Design is a way of thinking and designing the future of social networks, artefacts, spaces and ecologies. Taking into account all aspects of a system, it intertwines aesthetical practice (design/architecture) and prospective reasoning (future foresight). We expand the field of this young discipline with systemic counseling.
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EMBARKING FUTURE® is notably infused with systems thinking, curation practice, art theory, fiction theory, dramaturgy, semiotics, hermeneutic phenomenology, Gaia hypothesis, chaos theory, game theory.
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Our education programs are delivered by the re:future lab team, along with a selection of distinguished fellow artists and experts from a crossover of practices.
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While exploring, practicing, and learning on eye-level with artists and experts— the audiences gain strategic and operational agility. They acquire the competence to:
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EXPAND horizons and FREE imagination
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FIND new sense and vision
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RUPTURE verticals and ADVENTURE beyond convictions
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ENDURE sudden changes in trajectory
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ANTICIPATE alternative arenas.
Be part of a generation of pioneers.
Position yourself in the most forefront discourse.
Art program—Futures need artistic intervention
We trouble the status quo, speculate the what if, and imagine new combinatorial factors, synergies and narratives.
Our artistic program emphasizes diversity, ambiguity, and complexity in terms of medium, practice, and discipline. It embraces artistic research, activist thinking, conceptualism, bio-design, performance art, multi-sensory art, media art – in a non exhaustive manner.
A profound re:configuration of Art as a catalyst for change is merely conveyed by ultra-contemporary artists. This generation of escapists entangle some of the pressing issues of our time – ecologies, habitat, gender, technologies, societies.
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The meticulously research-based program covers a wide spectrum of formats: exhibitions, performances, artist talks, panels, lectures, workshops and studio visits. It is clustered in an annual narrative stream to explore, enact and design alternative futures.
Education program—Radical change needs vertical ruptures
towards a fundamental shift in attitude.
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Installing new sets of observation, reckoning contextual spheres, asking circular questions and merging disciplines are pivotal - to re:frame our "inner logic", overcome normative patterns and break alternative grounds.
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Our institute is a productive environment for debate, knowledge transfer and ideation.
We equip individuals, institutions and corporates to explore new scenarios, navigate uncertainty and complexity – with the mission to install re:evolutionary sustainable systems. The ultimate destination is a space that we call HOLITOPIA® >>
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Our educational program is a bridge between theory and practice and a crossover of disciplines. It is infused by a proprietary method: the EMBARKING FUTURE® >>
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This is your chance to break away from business as usual, and position yourself in the most forefront discourse.
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WELT AM SONNTAG (by Gesine Borcherdt)
Creating a place where protagonists from art and science meet and debate the question 'How do we want to live?', is the right approach to jointly develop ideas that make our world a little better and our thinking freer. In Berlin, an important step has been taken to turn visions into reality
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