Program
New sets of observation, reckoning contextual spheres, asking circular questions and interfacing disciplines are pivotal — our program synchronizes artists, designers, architects with experts from social and nature sciences, techs, economy and politics in unconventional exhibitions, talks, panels, lectures, publications, mentoring and consultancy, symposia, conferences, seminars and experimental workshops.
We operate through a practice-based research to equip change agents with future ideas, post-disciplinary knowledge and contextual future skills.
From research to curatorial and educational offers, we infuse and deliver all our programs with EMBARKING FUTURES®, a proprietary meta-method, based on the model of Creative Intelligence - and the principles of Serendipity, Symbiosis, Process, Cooperation, Fiction, Flux.
Symbiotic Politics, Holitopia® 2023
Explore. Practice. Learn. Peer-to-peer encounters. 3-day immersive symposium.
Be part of an amazing experience!
‘Symbiotic Politics’ offers unique opportunities to activate and generate new systems for a particular or even multiple futures.
Besides a unique blend of speakers and tones of inspiration, ‘Symbiotic Politics’ stands for an immersive experience including an unconventional set of super-imposed art performances, exhibition, lectures, panels, talks, and unpredictable free formats.
— 3 days
— 9 keynotes, 3 performances, 2 talks, 1 panel, 1 workshop
— 15 international + local artists and experts
— site specific stage scenery and exhibition
re:FUTURE TALKS
In this ongoing dialogue series, we talk to Future Pioneers to find out what inspires them, how they think and what gets them going.
We talk about their approaches and current projects and ask about their wildest dreams. What are the even the craziest ideas they would like to realise, with whom would they like to team up with, and what would they do if everything were possible?
Among the upcoming guests are:
Prof. Pelin Celik, 29 June 2023
Professor for Industrial Design and System Design, HTW University for Applied Arts, Berlin
It is not about
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.
(b. 1990, Leipzig, Germany) is a conceptual designer exploring material cultures to create desirable future scenarios. She received numerous prizes (Green Concept Award, Design Parade Hyères, Icon Design 100 Talents to watch) and her work was shown at V&A Museum London, Museum of the City New York, MAKK Museum Cologne. Studio Formafantasma named her “one of the creative leaders of the future”. Her focus lies on: mundane objects in context, production systems, ecological cycles
In an upcoming exhibition in the frame of SYMBIOTIC POLITICS, 7-9 September 2023 she will show speculative objects from her most recent research on co-habitation.
Studio Madeleine Schwinge
Humans as social constructs and invented beings are at the center of Madeleine Schwinge >> post-disciplinary productions, where often fiction and reality blur.
Her ongoing series "The Psychedelic Chicks" (since 2016) stages a riot band on various scenes at the interstices of assemblage, drawing, painting, 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. Questioning the role of art in times of epochal shifts - The Psychedelic Chicks aim to provoke rupture, systemic intervention and critical debate. Thus, 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' series was nominated for the Social Art Award 2019.
Nov, 2 (6 - 8 pm) I in person I at re:future lab Berlin I in German and English
Free access after registration via
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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