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.
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.
Agenda 2023
Studio Visit / Artist Talk
with Charlie Stein
In her work Charlie Stein (*1986, Germany) deals with dominant cultural aesthetics questioning existing modes of perception within the context of a highly digitized, visually overstimulated world. Her material is gathered through extensive research and translated into drawings, installations, sculptures, paintings and text. Her focus lies on social structures, digital media and contemporary forms of communication.
She holds a postgraduate degree in fine art from the State Academy of Fine Art where she studied at the classes of Christian Jankowski and Rainer Ganahl in Stuttgart, as well as the class of Gerhard Merz in Munich. She was a recipient of a DAAD scholarship in 2010 to reside in Beijing, China. Recent exhibitions include Manifesta 11, Villa Merkel, the Songjiang Art Museum in Shanghai, Museum Villa Rot and the 2017 edition of the Istanbul Biennial. Charlie is a faculty member of the re:future lab Fellow Artists.
March 29, 2023 I in person and online I Berlin I in German and English
Studio visit 6-7 (20 Euro)
Online Talk 7-8 (free access after registration)
Artist Talk with
Prof. Stella Geppert
The sensual ability of the body to "think itself into" the space and the body in question, into the material, the fabric and the substance, is an important aspect of Stella Geppert's work that combines sculpture, drawing, performances and interventions in public spaces. She interweaves body techniques working with the intelligence of the body along with communicative processes. She is a professor of sculptural and space-related artistic practice at the University of Art and Design in Halle (Saale). Currently, she is engaged within "Routes Of Empathy" in her research on the Empathic in Art. Stella is a faculty member of the re:future lab Fellow Artists.
June I date will be announced soon I 2023, 6 -7 pm I online I in English
Online I in English
Free access after registration via email (with name and background)
Preview: Symposium 2023
Explore. Practice. Learn. Peer-to-peer encounters. A 3-day real lab immersive journey.
Holitopia®
Opening the frame for tangible fictions of co-existence. Delivered by the re:future lab team and Fellow artists and experts, together with distinguished guest speakers from foresight and academia.
#1: The Fragile Human
Crisis – empathy – chambers of wonder – synchronicity – membrane – friction – space – emergences
#2: The Entropic Dream
Chaos – complexity – mind landscapes – escapism – transformation design – new alliances – courage
#3: Symbiotic Politics
Speculative fiction – sociotopes – bio-design – living prototypes – new urban realities – vertical communities – holistic ecologies
In person I @refuturelab Berlin I in English
Get further information and pre-register here >>
Preview: HABITAT, Johanna Seelemann
In her practice contextual designer Johanna Seelemann >> (b. 1990, Leipzig, Germany) explores the mundane objects and materials of our everyday surroundings and learns more about their origins. Her investigations morph into designs developed using the tools of substitution, adaptation, and resiliency. Even if she explores nuanced topics, her results are always formulated as optimistic suggestions and proposals that make alternative future scenarios imaginable.
Seelemann’s works were previously exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Villa Noailles in Hyères, MAKK Museum Cologne, Design Museum Helsinki, Vandalorum Sweden, Vögele Kultur Zentrum Switzerland, Tønder Art Museum Denmark, TextielMuseum in Tilburg among other.
Johanna developed her fascinations during the Contextual Design master program at the Design Academy in Eindhoven (2019) as well as the bachelor course in Product Design at the Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavík (2016). She previously assisted Studio Formafantasma in their ‘Ore Streams’ and ‘Cambio’ projects. Currently she is programme director for MA Design at the University of the Arts, Reykjwik. Johanna is a faculty member of the re:future lab Fellow Artists.
In her upcoming exhibition at the re:future lab she will show speculative objects from her most recent research on co-habitation.
Upcoming exhibition, September 2023
Studio Visit with Madeleine Schwinge
Humans as social constructs and invented beings are at the center of Madeleine Schwinge >> productions, in which fiction and reality blur. Her series "The Psychedelic Chicks" (ongoing since 2016) stages a riot band that appear in various media scenes between assemblage, collage, drawing, multiples and performance lectures.
Schwinge uses cutouts (image and text fragments) from hybrid avant-garde magazines documenting art and cultural research in the fields of architecture, fashion, nightlife, sex, and film as main source material. These clippings are assembled for new meaning, often scanned and enlarged in digital prints, and re-composed to new fiction.
Underlining the question of the role of art in times of radical change - The Psychedelic Chicks aim to provoke rupture and critical debate. Creativity - the ability to dream, to think freely, to break with linear thinking and normative patterns of behavior - can be released and spread like sound spores throughout nature. 'The Psychedelic Chicks' are an artistic manifesto: Anyone has to change - Anyone can be a 'Psychedelic Chick'. The series has been nominated for the Social Art Award 2019.
Nov, 2 (6 -7 pm) I in person @refuturelab Berlin I in German or English
Free access after registration via email (with name and background)
Central to the re:future Lab is knowledge production, accompanied by the attitude of sharing. It's about observing a world's complexity from different points of view. Through art, we want to transfer skills to tackle it and to find constructive new approaches to design future
(Madeleine Schwinge in Die WELT AM SONNTAG >>)
Past
The Entropic Dream
Curated by Madeleine Schwinge
All things start from the point of an initial state of disorder. It is in fact a universal tendency (of all matter and energy) to move towards a state of inert uniformity. Entropy, like decay or ruin, is a very timely view of the world - and the social system - in which we live. As individuals, we are exposed to it in our daily lives. Yet, should we pursue less 'noise' and disturbance, greater stability (in our projects, our lives or our dreams)? Or should we learn to navigate through so many multiple and contradictory dynamics? Or perhaps we should even use this state of existence in a constructive manner?
The Entropic Dream Symposion is set at a tipping point where disorder is at its peak, to dream of the conditions and modes of re-configuring new order - and thus focusses on Transformation Design.
Participants explore, practice and learn about Transformation Design through insightful exchange and experiment with catalyst thinkers from the fields of art, design, architecture and beyond.
4 -5 Nov, 2022
Tearing up Verticals
How to navigate in complexity? Artistic intelligence is pre-requisite to radical transformation. Both, art and design, are essential practices to foster ideation process and forging new ground. Parallels and symbioses of art and design.
5 Nov 2022
Inserted in The Entropic Dream Symposium
The Fragile Human
Curated by Madeleine Schwinge
The Fragile Human Symposium is a chance to dive into the hidden facets of our relationship to food, to others, to ourselves. Once you opt in, you encounter the pivotal moment when obsolete rituals and secular memories are left over, you move nude to—and from—others through interwoven dreamscapes. It is a fresh journey into the enigmatic, the unpredictable, the unknown, the vulnerable. Who knows the quest or the destination? What is at stake is the whispered re-enactment, the creative process in which you engage in—and with—the surrounding sociotope.
Participants explore, practice and learn about The Fragile Human through insightful exchange and experiment with catalyst thinkers from the fields of art, design, food and beyond.
8 Oct, 2022
Hortulanus
Johanna Seelemann (Leipzig / Reykjavik)
Curated by Madeleine Schwinge
HORTULANUS pieces are compostable furniture from low-tech materials. They use low-embodied energy resources such as corn ears, straw and loam to re-envision our relationship with nature. Playing on the pre-conception of technological achievements, the aesthetics of HORTULANUS resists traditional connotations. Its appearance goes beyond vernacular and humble to create a desirable and opulent object. The pieces celebrate the abundance within the natural world.
15 Sept - 5 Nov, 2022
Silence Meal
Nina Backman (Berlin/ Helsinki)
The Silence Meal is a performative dining experience hosted by the Finnish artist Nina Backman. The meal follows a specific frame and is officially opened when the artist sits down. Attending to the rituals of a meal in a way that is free of verbal distraction, the communality of silence brings with it an intensity unique to the occasion. Thus, in removing the ingredient of the spoken word, guests are left free to explore a myriad of sensory experiences that can be both physical, emotional, spiritual or cultural in nature. The Silence Meal presents its guests with an opportunity to observe what emerges in place of unspoken interaction.
8 Oct 2022, 1-3 pm
Inserted in The Fragile Human Symposium
HUMAN MACHINE WORLD
Art for the Anthropocene / Vol2
The Whole Earth 2045.
Memories and Bodies from a Future
Johanna Bruckner (Zurich),
Grégory Chatonsky (Paris),
Parsons & Charlesworth (Chicago)
Curated by Madeleine Schwinge
6 Nov 2021 - 26 Feb 2022
Images:
(1) Johanna Bruckner, Crush Pad Lava, 2021
(2) Parsons & Charlesworth, Catalog for the Posthuman, 2021
(3) Gregory Chatonsky, E-phemeral skin, 2021
Human hybridization
Nov. 6, 5-6 pm
Panel discussion with
Parsons & Charlesworth (Artists and Designer) and
Ian Erik Stewart (Neuro scientist, Max Delbrück Institut)
moderated by Madeleine Schwinge
"Imagining a future where success depends upon our ability to be permanently cognitively sharp, quantifying ourselves with data, and able to work the long and irregular hours assigned by algorithm led corporations, Catalog for the Post-Human provides tools to help workers cope with circumstances in which their bodies may be pushed to the limit“, (Parsons & Charlesworth)
HUMAN MACHINE WORLD
Art for the Anthropocene / Vol1
A Blink from Sonic Eyes.
Drawings from the Fleeting Archive of Towards Sound
Sketches from 17 international composers and sound artists. The archive Towards Sound was initiated by composer and curator Ruth Wiesenfeld, Berlin.
Curated by Jan-Philipp Frühsorge
7 Oct - 30 Oct 21
Images: Lucia Hinojosa Gaxiola, 2021
Notation of Ideas
7 Oct, 5-6 pm
with
Dr. Ruth Wiesenfeld, Composer/ Curator (Berlin)
Alessandra Eramo, Performance Artist, Composer (Stuttgart)
Sagardìa, Composer (Berlin)
moderated by Jan-Philipp Frühsorge (Art curator)
IMAGINE - we could be the ones to change it all
Madeleine Schwinge
The Psychedelic Chicks, 2021
Limited edition of six multiples.
Fine art print, 118 x 84 cm.
25 Jul - 30. Sept 2021
Images: Madeleine Schwinge, Imagine we would be the ones, The Psychedelic Chicks, 2021
Images:
(1) Stella Geppert, InsideT, 2020
(2) Installation view
RADICAL ROOMING
An experimental live performance and artistic proposition exploring our way to inhabit space and connect with the others during corona lockdown.
1 venue. 4 artists. 5 cameras. 1 screen.
Co-curated by Mathilde Irrmann, Madeleine Schwinge and Cécile Nebbot
Artists:
Mathilde Irrmann, Berlin (Lecture),
Brandon Johnson, L.A. and Berlin (Music),
Elitsa Mateva, Berlin (Dance),
Stella Geppert, Berlin (Art) with InsindeT - Learning from the body, 2020 re:future Lab edit
Technical team:
Lan Syreen, Jeffray Schwabe, mk, Sarah Bouchet, Paul Stutenbäumer
with text fragments from:
Ingeborg Bachmann, Berlinde de Bruyckere, Mathilde Irrmann, Michel Foucault, Alberto Giacometti, Kim Gordon, Ursula Le Guin, Robert Smithson, Peter Zumthor
Live screening via YouTube and Facebook
28 Jan 2021, 6-7 p.m.
PERSPECTIVES
Tomorrow is the question.
Seek movements.
Hollie Miller (London)
Jovana Popic (Berlin)
Madeleine Schwinge (Berlin)
Jonny Star (Berlin)
Charlie Stein (Berlin)
Curated by Madeleine Schwinge
5 Dec 20 - 16 Jan 2021
Images: (1) Charlie Stein, Mirror face, 2020; (2) Madeleine Schwinge, Searching for new utopias, 2019, (3) Jovana Popić, Heterotopia, 2017
IN DIALOGUE
The Artist and the Artist's Collection
with works by Joseph Beuys, Paula Doepfner, Marlene Dumas, EVA & ADELE, Valérie Favre, Gilbert&George, Caroline Kryzecki, Jovana Popic, Madeleine Schwinge, Jonny Star, Claire Tabouret
Curated by Madeleine Schwinge
2 Oct - 14 Nov 2020
Images: (1) Jovana Popić, Routes 1, 2014; (2) Madeleine Schwinge, New Biopic, The Psychedelic Chicks, 2019; (3) Valerie Favre, Ghost (After Witches' Flight by Goya), 2014-15
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