Shared from: Equilibri

by Domenico Olivero

From 27 April until 17 September 2017 M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp is hosting an exhibition that intends to be ‘more than an exhibition’.

A Temporary Futures Institute turns the museum into a laboratory or studio, brings together two contexts that have certain things in common: art and futures studies.

The co-organisers are M HKA’s senior curator Anders Kreuger and Antwerp-based professional futurist Maya Van Leemput.

Both artists and professional futurists have been invited (from the sub-fields of Alternative Futures, Design Futures, Postnormal Futures and Technology Futures) to contribute to and participate in a common project.

All contributors in A Temporary Futures Institute are asked to address either continuation (or continued growth), collapse (in itself but also as a possible beginning of something new), discipline (whether top-down, as in authoritarian societies, or bottom-up, as in activist movements) and transformation (with special attention to possible future roles of Artificial Intelligence).

Each futures scenario is addressed by at least one artist and one non-artist, and the exhibition is organized as discrete units, enveloped by a purpose-built set commissioned from the artist Alexander Lee (1974, French Polynesia).

The other invited artists are: Nina Roos (1956, Finland) and Darius Žiūra (1968, Lithuania) for ‘continuation’; Michel Auder (1944, France/US) and Simryn Gill (1959, Malaysia/Australia) for ‘collapse’; Miriam Bäckström (1967, Sweden) and Kasper Bosmans (1990, Belgium) for ‘discipline’; Guan Xiao (1983, China) and Jean Katambayi (1974, Democratic Republic of the Congo) for ‘transformation’.

Maya Van Leemput (1969, Belgium) has also contributed to the exhibition, for ‘continuation’.
The professional futurists invited are: Meimei Song (1966 Taiwan) for ‘collapse’; Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies (London/Chicago), consisting of Ziauddin Sardar (1951, Pakistan/UK) and John Sweeney (1977, US) for ‘discipline’; Stuart Candy (1980, Australia/Canada) for ‘transformation’.

Image Credits: M HKA, A Temporary Futures Institute, Installation View ©M HKA – Museum of Modern Art Antwerp, Belgium