Project for Akademie der Künste Berlin and European Alliance of Academies
Controlling Future: Technologies of Resistance
“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
The current political struggle to control the production and dissemination of narratives about the future appears to be less about what is actually likely to happen, but more about claiming authority and political power to shape outcomes in the present. What is at stake here is who obtains control of the narratives on the technological induced fate, the role of work and further conditions of human life in the future. Neither the direction of the technological evolution is not set in stone, nor is its broader effect on society and nature.
The Covid-19 crisis appeared as a time compressed preview of more severe disruptions that the climate crisis will bring. In social sciences the literature on political consequences of how climate change pressures will affect work, production or technology adaptation is worryingly thin. There is little intersection between scientific research about natural implications of climate change and political consequences of it, which reflects the general conceptual divisions between the scientific fields, dividing nature from society.
The Project “Controlling Future: Technologies of Resistance” is questioning the politics representations of future and political and economic control of those future narratives. Through artistic enquiry, exchange of knowledge and imagination it produces creative actions that challenge and deconstruct those narratives. Working together with activists, experts, citizens and researchers in different European capitals, it employs art as a technology for generation of ideas and potential solutions for the two strategic challenges: the future of human life and human labor.
The broader mission of the project is to create a blueprint of the new collaborative interdisciplinary working processes between different activists, experts, citizens and researchers on the topic of future defining strategies.
The first part of the project is a documentary field research film on visions of future, taken on the streets of Berlin in spring 2022, in collaboration with the filmmaker Greg Blakey.
The second part presents artist’s collaboration with scientific researchers developing new learning systems mediated by immersive, simulated future landscapes.
Idea and Concept: Jovana Popić
Camera: Greg Blakey
Interviewer: Dirk Vollmann
PROJECT PRESENTATION AND SCREENING:
16.12.2022, Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin