Forecast 2017, summary
The Cycle Starts All Over Again
A brief moment to breathe: In late October 2017, our second edition of Forecast closed with an enormously energetic Forecast Festival. “It was a huge success, and I’m a bit overwhelmed,” joked Forecast founder and artistic director Freo Majer, commenting on the project’s past year and especially the Festival itself. At the event, each of →
Flora Miranda
Knitting Identities
In just a few days, designer Flora Miranda’s live performance—a fascinating collaboration between the digital realm and the worlds of design and music—will be shared at the Forecast Festival. Visitors may experience the entire process, and gain valuable insights into Miranda’s wholly innovative way of working, which will shape future concepts of creativity. Miranda decided →
Tara Catherine Pandeya
Dance without Borders
Tara Catherine Pandeya is in the midst of final rehearsals for her one-woman show at the Forecast Festival, which draws upon traditional dances to address topical questions of alterity and exclusion. In Raqsistan, The Land of Dance: A Cartography of the Body, she aims to stage physically innovative responses to conflicts heightened in our contemporary →
Liliana Piskorska
Individual Bodies, Public Protest
It’s just a few days until the debut of Liliana Piskorska’s video art piece Public Displays of Affection at the Forecast Festival, which vividly illustrates the physical clash between protestors and police. Examining this contact through the medium of film will allow Festival visitors to engage with a topical issue in an innovative way. Piskorska’s →
Renan Laru-an
Exhibition as Speech, Speech as Exhibition
In the final days before the Forecast Festival, curator Renan Laru-an is working closely with his mentor and his team to solidify his study of dictators’ image production and world-making, captured in his project The Artist and the Social Dreamer. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt auditorium is the heart of his work. Here, visitors →
Mathieu Bujnowskyj
Objects as Triggers
Reflecting on six months of intense collaboration with mentor Philippe Rahm, Mathieu Bujnowskyj shares three key insights. The Forecast Festival is days away, and architect Mathieu Bujnowskyj is putting the finishing touches on his prototypes before their debut at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. His designs reinterpret three antique furniture typologies. The prototypes →
Flora Miranda
“I See Myself in the Screen”
Flora Miranda has always immersed herself in environments where creativity is paramount, but one element—digital technology—remained inaccessible. Until she began her research for Forecast, that is. “My work so far has always dealt with topics relating to the digital world,” Miranda recounts. “But it was always a fictional, speculative approach, due to a lack of →
Renan Laru-an
A Congress of Dictators
The curator Renan Laru-an started with a fascination for the volatile subject of dictators’ speeches. At the Forecast Forum, his focus was on printed works, reflecting on the question of how to present these speeches in an exhibition. But his close mentoring relationship with Hou Hanru has inspired him to pivot into an intriguing new →
Liliana Piskorska
Transposing the Violence
Liliana Piskorska’s video art project “Public Displays of Affection” originally focused on the tremendous changes Poland has undergone in recent years. In a series of intense discussions with her mentor, video artist Bjørn Melhus, she has begun to look away from the specifics of one nation’s politics to the sheer physicality of “the moment of →
Stefan Maier
Feeling Sounds
Stefan Maier’s Forecast project explores the impact of sound on our physicality—how it transforms our nervous systems and gets to our corporeality’s beating heart. His performative installation questions habitual modes of thinking and interacting with music. The discovery of a unique way to physically engage the audience in his music has transformed his plans for →
Mathieu Bujnowskyj
Architecture in the Post-Digital Age
By exploring ways of using architecture to address the needs of a society tethered to digital technologies, Mathieu Bujnowskyj’s partnership with mentor Phillippe Rahm is inciting questions on the discourse of the discipline itself. From WiFi to 3G, from the cloud to our constant attachment to smartphones, everything and everyone is perpetually connected. As part →
The Selected Mentees 2017
The Projects Have Been Selected!
Now that the Forecast Forum at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) has concluded, we are delighted to announce the concepts our mentees will realize with their mentors: The Artist and the Social Dreamer Mentee: Renan Laru-an / Mentor: Hou Hanru Public Displays of Affection Mentee: Liliana Piskorska / Mentor: Bjørn Melhus Fullspectrum Furniture Mentee: →
A project by Hui Ye
Quick Code Service
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 →
A project by Joshua Kagimu
Mysteries of Selfies
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 →
A project by Jaime Patarroyo
A Momentary Trembling
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 →
A project by Raphaëlle Oskar and Mayasari Feradina Zoesmar
Mute On
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 →
A project by Ricardo O’Nascimento
ProtoSenses
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 →
A project by Scott Mc Laughlin
Resonant Paths
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 →
A project by Michel Erler
Gaming Is the New Voting
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 →
A project by Ania Soliman
Explaining Dance to a Machine
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 →
A project by Sebastian Haug
Sen[city]sation
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 →
A project by Annika Kuhlmann
After Work
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 →
A project by Stefan Maier
Incompossibles: Speculative Thought and Algorithmic Architecture
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 →
A project by Anna Sobczak
Nostalgia
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 →