Madeleine
Schwinge

Madeleine Schwinge is an art researcher at the interfaces of art, design, systems thinking and futures studies, with a focus on planetary thinking and socio-cultural shifts.

As a curator, educator and consultant for art and future design, and with a background in serial entrepreneurship, systemic coaching and visual arts, she heads the re:future lab, that she founded in 2020.

Her ‘HOLITOPIA Manifesto’ (2022) is a call to co-create a holistic and pragmatic utopia in the here and now. The five principles of creative intelligence formulated in it provide the methodological and practical framework for her curatorial, advisory and education projects. In 2024, she initiated and directed the ‘HOLITOPIA Festival for Arts and Futures’, which was awarded in the highest category for innovation and international attention by Projekt Zukunft, a program of the Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises.

In her artistic work, she uses multimedia and performance to explore the upheavals of our time and their effects on our psyche and behaviour. Her ongoing series ‚The Psychedelic Chicks‘ has been featured in scholarly publications on post-studio art and was nominated for the 2019 Social Art Award.

She lectures at the HTW University of Applied Sciences in Berlin in the master's program in System Design.

She is engaged with the WFSF World Future Studies Federation (a UNESCO Partner) and the Gesellschaft für künstlerische Forschung Deutschland. She served the Ogilvy Futuring Science and Ethics Advisory Board in 2022-2023, and was appointed a founding member of Berlin Design e.V. in 2023.

She holds a diploma in economics (DHBW Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Stuttgart) and is a certified systemic coach and teaching coach (Dr. Bock Coaching Akademie). She pursued further studies in art history (Free University Berlin) and obtained certificates in curation and fine arts (Berlin University of the Arts).