Area of Activity II: Innovation and Technology

FUTURE/S

When people look to the future, they often do so with a sense of anxiety and concern. The focus of this project is to counteract the lack of positive visions for the future in our political culture and to work towards creating desirable future models.


Participants
20-25 experts in the fields of design, science fiction, the political sciences, the start-up scene and other relevant disciplines; artists and activists attendees of the Utopia Festival in Tel Aviv and the re:publica conference in Berlin

Project Content
The Utopia Festival in Tel Aviv and the re:publica conference in Berlin are events with their own separate communities, which for years have been bringing people together in order to discuss the future of the digital society. Within the framework of this project, members of both communities – researchers, artists and activists – meet in order to work together to develop positive life concepts and visions for the future designed to enable social change. Instead of allowing ourselves to be paralysed by fear of an apocalyptic future, the aim is to fully exploit the potential for positive human action, as well as our creativity. Here, emphasis is placed on the fact that the future is never pre-ordained, but that people have the opportunity to shape it according to their own vision.

Project Working Methods
The project starts with an opening event as part of the 2018 Utopia Festival. This is followed by a joint workshop for participants from Germany and Israel, which marks the start of a phase of exchange and collaboration that extends for several months. Topics such as media and democracy, the body and identity, cities and communities, will be addressed from an academic and artistic perspective. The aim is to rethink relevant societal themes and develop future concepts in which technology and digitalisation are used for humanistic purposes, rather than people becoming slaves of their machines.

Project Goals
The project culminates in a publication combining academic essays and policy recommendations with fictional short stories and artistic contributions. Groups of 3-5 participants, who have worked together on a topic, will present their results at the re:publica conference in May and at the Utopia Festival in December 2019. In this way, the concepts will be made accessible to a broad general public in Israel and Germany.


Cooperating Partners
Utopia – Israeli Association for the Speculative and Fantastic
re:publica