On Saturday and Sunday, during the public days of the Forecast Forum, 18 creative trailblazers and activists—three in each category—bring their concepts to life through various presentations and talks. At the end of the Forecast Forum, each mentor will select one candidate and accompany their concept to realization over the next nine months. Saturday, July →
Artist and filmmaker Omer Fast explains how he chose the three candidates for the Forecast mentorship program out of dozens of applicants: “I understand moving image in the broadest possible way, encompassing everything between live performance and film. The three artists I requested to work with all had strong work; each project can open a →
Radio producer and curator Peter Meanwell is the mentor in the category Beyond Radio, which he describes as being “about considering the notion of transmission and broadcast, but freed from the constraints of traditional radio infrastructures.” “We think of radio as the news that comes out of the box in the kitchen,” he adds, “and →
Curator David Elliott defined the category of his mentoring at Forecast as Looking. Why? “Looking is an active verb,” he explains. “It’s not just about seeing—it implies a ‘for.’ What is this ‘for’ and what does it have to do with art? This is the subject of my mentorship.” Through art and artistic practices, the →
For musician and mentor Holly Herndon, the category Composition refers to time-based work either in the form of documentation/recorded media, performance, or a combination thereof. “My primary focus concerns, but is not limited to, sound,” she says. She selected the three projects that will be presented at the Forecast Forum for their ability to reflect →
Design curator and museum director Tulga Beyerle borrowed the term Invasive Design from Robert Stadler, the designer who coined it, to define her mentorship’s topic. “[Invasive Design] describes how design is not always as clear, functional, or positive as it pretends to be” she says. “My particular interest is to ask what design can do →
Forecast is pleased to announce the participants in this year’s edition of the Forecast Forum. A total of 18 projects have been selected out of more than 390 applications from around the world. The six distinguished mentors of Forecast’s third iteration have each chosen three projects that they will accompany in the upcoming months, culminating →
Hui Ye’s Forecast project explores the intersection of technology and identity in evoking a sense of intimacy. Returning to China after a twelve-year absence, she realized that life in China today consists of permanently switching between the digital and physical worlds. The two have become a single reality in everyday life in China. “The WeChat →
Joshua Kagimu’s project explores the ways in which a selfie can be used to create an alter ego and positions the selfie as a form of performance art. “Unlike studio photography, selfies allow us to edit our location and our poses; they allow us to reform our identities in a snapshot moment. I’m intrigued →
Jaime Patarroyo’s Forecast proposal explores the idea of empathetic space: a living environment capable of exhibiting human reactions to the people occupy-ing it. Using advanced materials, the designer will develop a reactive fabric based on materials that respond to human touch—questioning the relationship between human behavior and digital technologies. “I would like to explore →
Mute On reveals what happens in the space between question and answer. Raphaëlle Oskar and Mayasari Feradina Zoesmar’s proposal combines choreo-graphy, verbal expression, and a theoretical exploration of communication processes. Just as each question looks for an answer, the duo’s performance unveils what shapes the space between person A and person B. “We define →
Ricardo O’Nascimento’s proposal uses wearable technology to explore the relation-ship between humans and machines. The designer is particularly interested in creating devices and situations that allow people to experience the world in unconventional ways, and views wearable artifacts as a means of transcending the traditional boundaries of sensory experience. “Why not hear with our →
Scott Mc Laughlin’s project Resonant Paths utilizes the extensive public spaces available at Haus der Kulturen der Welt for an interactive installation of suspended everyday objects that viewers can play as instruments. “The objects are organized in such a way that paths are offered through the garden, paths of pitch. The participants thread their →
Michel Erler’s proposal uses an interactive gaming platform to encourage citizens to engage with their communities. In an age characterized by widespread political and social dislocation, Gaming Is the New Voting aims to facilitate direct democra-tic participation, capitalizing on cutting-edge technology to explore new forms of policymaking and citizenship. “The political year 2016 was →
Ania Soliman’s proposal begins with Laban’s movement notation system, which she imagines as a script that will teach a robot how to dance. “This work is about score, performance, and artificial intelligence. I am interes-ted in developing ideas of the body as machine, the mind as running on scripts, and using the medium of →
Sebastian Haug’s proposal examines meteorological effects on urban spaces to explore the intersection of nature and architecture. His deep personal interest in the impact of atmospheric changes has driven him to recognize the need for sophisticated methods capable of measuring and adapting to the weather. “There are currently not enough practical options to measure →
Annika Kuhlmann’s proposal After Work examines the role of the contemporary artist in a society increasingly dominated by machines. As more jobs become automated, Kuhlmann imagines a post-work economy where immaterial labor resembles the work of artists. After Work will look at the possible institution-alization of art in a society where everyone can—and needs—to be →
Stefan Maier’s proposal questions the notion of freedom in the age of determinis-tic algorithms. Proposing a completely new direction for his work, Maier looks to explore and conceptualize human agency in a society dominated by feeds that socially condition our preferences and reinforce habitual modes of thinking. “I am interested in the speculative potential →
Anna Sobczak’s proposal explores the concept of nostalgia and passing down memories in several small villages deep in the mountains of southern Italy. “In extensive interviews, these villagers will be asked to define the memories and knowledge about humans they would like to pass on to an artificial intelligence. During these interviews I will →
Jesi Khadivi’s proposal explores the way environmental elements can function as carriers for political narratives in the Middle East. Building upon an image of a violent dust storm in her father’s home city of Ahvaz in Iran, Khadivi’s presen-tation will depict a series of dust storms—both real and imagined. “While the dust storms in →
Nichola Czyz’s proposal queries the meaning of nature in an anthropocentric world. Czyz intends to use her background in architecture to answer these questions by artificially simulating the environment of Mount Kinabalu in Borneo. The Foundation for Non-Anthropocentric Nature will explore the inter-action of the manmade and the natural, hypothesizing a manmade habitat for an →
What are the limits of individual responsibility? How can we respond to the problem of elitism? Julia Sokolnicka draws on her recent experiences to create a manual for approaching the Other, focusing on the emotional states that unite us when we are forced to leave our comfort zones. “I would like to use the →
Lisa Tuyala’s Forecast project blends electronic music, extended vocal technique, and deconstructed language to tell a story close to her heart. The German-Congolese artist will piece together her family narrative using the letters that her German mother wrote home to Duisburg in the 1970s while living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) →
Tara Catherine Pandeya’s project is a one-woman multimedia show inspired by human emotions. The work is a fictional dance world of Pandeya’s own invention, choreographed using the traditions of ethno-contemporary Central Asian dance. “What are effective ways to express traditional and ethno-contemporary movement in a postmodern framework? How can one execute a harmonious synthesis →
Mathieu Bujnowskyj’s proposal responds to the way digital technologies are profoundly shaping modern society and the relationship we have to architecture. “Our society is now facing the emergence of a certain post-digital condition, where our economy, culture, social conventions, and inevitably architecture, too, are deeply influenced by the diffuse, long-term consequences of digital technol-ogies →
Tsao Yidi’s proposal is an interdisciplinary and international examination of representations and perceptions of the human brain. Tsao will utilize cultural history, art, literature, science, and technology to create a multifaceted exploration of the brain. “With the advancement of neuroscience and biochemistry in modern science, we have witnessed a paradigm shift in our understanding →
In his proposal for Forecast, Isaac Chong Wai will develop a series of performances dealing with the concepts of individualism versus collectivism, and the personal versus the public. “When it comes to the idea of the future, how can we prepare and practice the search for an idealistic space or a utopia in which everyone means →
Stephen Kwok’s project dismantles the internal logic of wildly disparate events and reassembles them into a single cohesive experience. He investigates how sound can be manipulated to subtly shape mundane events. Is it possible to redirect the type of attention normally reserved for the sacred space of the theater? To what extent can the idea →
In his dissertation project, Mika Savela studied the curatorial strategies used to put rapidly growing cities in South China on display as novelties or even as paradigms for urbanization from the mid-1990s to 2000s. “Curating as a newly emerged discipline became (if only for a while) the main discursive space for projects on urbanism →
Liliana Piskorska’s video art proposal Public Displays of Affection tackles the tremendous changes Poland has undergone in recent years. “The deeply conservative new government has altered laws with shocking speed, bending democratic procedures in the process. In response, a wave of demonstra-tions has swept through Poland. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets →
The geolfaltoscope is a tool of Carlos Ramírez-Pantanella’s invention. It is a device emitting scented currents into city air to evoke olfactory landscapes in environments that are often far away. “Human beings inhale and exhale an average of 23,000 times a day, and every single flow of air is loaded with information. Scents act →
Flora Miranda’s proposal presents an application that collects data about a user’s online behavior to design a unique item of clothing specifically for him or her. “The vision is to create a data visualization app that takes full advantage of the virtual world and materializes user data in the form of luxurious garments. The →
Choreographer Joël Detiège’s project proposal Flambeaux examines the fictions of history and the facts of myth. He uses music and dance to tell the African diaspora’s story of struggle, perseverance, and triumph in New Orleans. Its members’ achievement is conveyed through the astounding array and quality of the music its history fostered, and the cathartic, →
Composer Maya Shenfeld’s proposal uses the structure and experience of a sound installation to explore the effect social media has on our everyday lives. “Recent political events such as the United States elections and Brexit have again highlighted the extent to which new media has come to play a defining role in the →
Video artist Beny Wagner’s proposal emerges from his extensive research into both the notion of the obscene as derived from ancient Greek theater, and how the meaning of this term has evolved over time. “The English word ‘obscene’ comes from the ancient Greek ‘ob skene,’ translating literally as ‘off-scene’ or ‘off-stage.’ The word embodies →
Renan Laru-an’s project proposal The Artist and the Social Dreamer is a curatorial plan that puts the medium of formal orations at the heart of an exhibition, focusing on forms of globalization created by the internationalisms of authoritarian leaders. Libyan Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi, Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, Nur Misuari, and other dictators have used →
Marina Andronescu’s project proposal focuses on a community of young people who have colonized the web of underground pipes and tunnels that provide Bucharest, Romania, with central heating. Her project develops architectural mechanisms intended to change these individuals’ immediate environment and the larger political situation, and to help them gradually transition to an above-ground existence. →
In her proposed project Mossy Haze, Katharina Rüter wants to develop an indoor design object that contains and sustains moss, trying both to span and fuse the worlds of architecture, design and nature. Mossy Haze implies a practical approach to the question how changing climate conditions could influence the way cities, buildings and especially indoor →
Amitesh Grover’s project proposal A Performapedia questions the notion of an archive based on objects and explores how we look at those forms of knowledge that are not embraced by modern archival strategies. The modern archive conventionally relies upon documents, art objects and photographs to build on history. Eventually, these objects themselves become the ‘historical’ →
Svenja Schüffler´s project proposal Installing Seismic Risk of Istanbul aims to visualize and discuss the seismic risk of Istanbul from an art-science perspective in the form of a real time simulation. The difficulty of perceiving and communicating seismic risk and the complexity of researching and making decisions in a situation of uncertainty are the main →
Elise Eeraerts’ proposed project Burning Mass is a film following the making of a vast site-specific sculpture in its original, natural environment. Intended to be monumental in scale, the sculpture will consist of massive manufactured clay components. The film focuses attention on the act of creating this sculpture and the process through which knowledge of →
Natalia Carrus’ proposed project Packarting Plastic is an experimental art project which seeks to raise consciousness for a sustainable shift in attitudes toward consumption that can satisfy actors at every level, from the consumer to the industrial. Every decade, global production of plastic doubles, and there is no end in sight. We have no clue →
With her project proposal Case Cortina Milena Kipfmüller proposes to develop a radio concert that conveys the acoustic particularities of various cities using field recordings, musical material and speech. “I would like to combine dramaturgical strategies with a composition that reacts flexibly to unforeseen situations and opens up discourse between urban space and the public →
Kabir Carter’s proposed project FdK Actions or the People’s Polymorph entails a personal yet societal engagement with the automobile brand Volkswagen. Through a series of deskilled, abstracted cannibalizations of Taylorist practices, he will put both Volkswagen car parts and Volkswagen’s corporate history together improperly in order to make something else, or nothing at all. “Through →
Joanna Banach´s project proposal MMM Hotel describes a portable hotel made of pop-up modules. MMM stands for Modular, Mobile, Modifiable and addresses the inconvenient problem of housing scarcity at temporary mass events like design fairs, music festivals or sport events. “MMM Hotel was created as my master’s project. Due to the fact that I really →
Mohamed’s project proposal Plug-Inn investigates the traditional and digital fabrication of timber houses. The reed houses of the Mesopotamian marshes and the wooden churches of northern Europe are the parameters of Mohamed’s research. He explores their potential and implications, so as to develop a concept and structure for prefabricated timber housing suitable for urban and →
Roberto Santaguida’s project proposal Peripheral City involves an installation depicting the daily lives of fourteen anonymous people living in Berlin. Their testimonies will be presented as large format photographs processed using reductive negation. By reducing the images to block-like shapes, Roberto Santaguida pursues to generate an individual kinetic composition of forms. “I will be working →
L. Sasha Gora’s proposed project Talking with Your Mouth Full is a performative installation. Moving beyond a simple exploration of food associated with religions, lifestyles and traditions, L. Sasha Gora proposes an installation created in collaboration with artists, researchers and designers that analyzes eating rituals comparatively and in-depth. When do we eat with utensils or →
Kylie King’s project proposal You Can’t Photograph the Future is a video installation that questions our understanding of the immense problem of environmental destruction through the visual register. Her point of depature is the new geological turn of the anthropocene, a proposed epoch that begins when human activities started to have a significant global impact →
In her project proposal Tracing a Path, Iza Tarasewicz plans to construct a continually adjusting obstacle course as a site for embodied knowledge, activity and encounter. Her obstacle course is a reconfigurable installation of modular geometric constructions that examines the relationship between human activities towards space and questions how such relationships can be altered or →
Noémi Zajzon´s project proposal Encounters with Diasporic Futures investigates the urban terrain as a socially constructed mainspring and mediator of being and belonging, of memories, motivations and narratives of diasporic youth in London. Mapping the activity of the Bangladeshi youth community in London, she pursues her particular interest in challenging the concept of diaspora, not →
Shannon Werle´s project proposal The Sound of Buildings examines the different amplitude envelopes in the city of Berlin. The sound environment filters through every building in a unique and inimitable manner depending on the form, material, dimension and geographical situation of the structure. Shannon Werle will analyze several amplitude envelopes based on recorded data that →
Mauricio Freyre’s project proposal Huaca Catalina Huanca / PREVI uses film as a medium of communication, display and research. In it, he proposes to investigate various phenomena linked to the handling of modernity in Latin America at two different locations in Lima, the capital of Peru. Mauricio Freyre conceives of his investigative process as one →
Kalliopi Tsipni-Kolaza’s project proposal Rave-olutions takes a look at the alternative music scene that has recently emerged among young Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. As a politicized counterculture formed by musicians and their diverse audience, this rave party scene fuses local and international musical expressions as a form of resistance and protest. →
Arne Vogelgesang´s project proposal Mirror Stage combines the use of contemporary technologies of human representation through hardware and software interfaces with questions of national identity. By tracing radical political subcultures and their diffusion of propaganda on the internet, Arne Vogelgesang means to draw a virtual landscape of ideological Germany. For him, the ultimately impossible cartography →
Leila Albayaty’s project proposal From a Palm Tree to the Stars portrays a personal journey between Arab and Western culture. The starting point of the project evolves from the double cultural heritage of the artist, who is half French and half Iraqi. From there, Leila Albayaty aims to explore issues such as origin, identity and →
Natalia Escobar’s project proposal A Small Spot in the Night Sky aims to investigate both the psychological and physiological aspects of human perception through the experience of dreaming. In an immersive sound and light installation, she intends to progressively warp rational and arranged reality, causing it to operate on a completely different level of perception. →
“this is the land beyond my white blanched fears. sparse fallows, waste space, silence.“ ENTER. A blinding white hall. The ceiling: a glistening screen. The soil is fading in shifts of bright light, steps immediately become uncertain, tapping, tripping. A white cube. Antarctica. All of a sudden frazzles of texts appear: They pop up as →
Tobias Nolte’s project proposal Mine the Scrap is aimed at developing a technology-enabled process to reuse construction waste. It applies technology used in facial recognition and robotic construction to the problem of detecting, sorting and assembling shattered pieces of glass. The final outcome will be a technologically enabled interpretation of a stained glass window. “Mine →
In her project proposal, Ewa Wesołowska ties the fundamental ideas of a light-sound installation to traditional and modern sculptural elements. From her point of view, traditional sculptural technique is synonymous with memorization, like a trace of a human hand left on the surface of an object. When she started working with light-sound installations, Ewa Wesołowska →
Ana María Gómez López’ project proposal Wind Instruments is a sound installation of three wind-based systems: an industrial-scale data center, a coastal wind farm and a historic church organ. Using full-spectrum recordings of audible, ultrasonic and infrasonic wavelengths, she will interweave meteorological and sonic phenomena into an immersive architectural intervention. „My aim is not a →
To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the golden age of alpinism, Agnieszka Kozlowska proposes to set off across the Alps and climb to locations overlooking more than 40 peaks ascended for the first time in that period (1854-1865). Using a heretofore unexplored photographic technique, she will produce a relief in a light-sensitive polymer plate exposed →
Wendy Di Wang’s project proposal Solux describes an interactive street lighting system to improve safety in public places. Solux is based on solar tracking technology and permits a far more efficient and economical way to harness solar power. “From the research and interviews of police department, public safety, and people who have been injured and →
Arturo Soto’s project proposal entails a photographic depiction of Ciudad Juárez in Mexico that reflects the city’s complex history. Processes of globalization and a specific urban hybridity, both of which are due to Juárez’ geographical location on the border with the USA, have shaped the city’s history. Over the past twenty years, Juarez has become →
Martha Schwindling’s project proposal FLAT presents designed products that bring out the special in the ordinary and question our habits in handling everyday objects. As her slogan feel like a tourist at home indicates, she is interested in how familiar objects can be improved and turned into something spectacular. Martha Schwindling’s design approach is not →
Christina Della Giustina’s project proposal you are variations reads scientific data on the life of trees as a music score. It interprets, translates and arranges long-term measurements of trees into a composition. In so doing, it draws attention to the complex water cycling and sophisticated energy balance trees exhibit under different environmental conditions. In light →
Markus Hoffmann’s project proposal Particle Pavilion is an attempt to make radioactivity visible. It is an architectural outdoor structure with a roof constructed from switchable glass panes. As rays emanating from the radioactive decay processes in the surroundings hit the window panes, the surface of the glass shimmers, alternating from opaque to transparent and back →
