Cultures of Anticipated Futures
Conference
In Warsaw, on October 11 there will be a three-day conference on anticipated future Culture organized by the Polish Cultural Institute of the University of Warsaw and the Biennale Warsaw.
Marc Augé in the book entitled “Futuro” distinguishes the future understood as “what will come” from the future as the “conjunction moment”, that is, catching the right perspective, capturing the turn of emerging events and sensations in advance. During the conference, we want to take just such a task – by overcoming pessimistic social diagnoses and feelings about the inevitable ecological, economic, political and technological catastrophe, we want to do the exercise of the anticipatory imagination.
The project of the conference on forward-looking cultures meets the challenges of critical elaboration of problems with the future. We are interested in a different sense – as a category of thinking and as a concept. An important dimension for our reflection on the future is its performative dimension, associated with efficient and effective action in the complex social reality, also with the help of imaginations. If Franco Berardi is right, that opportunities lie in the social mind, in the social organization of knowledge, in the cooperation between knowledge workers in the world, it is worth asking about political strategies of engaging the future and at the global and local level.
The ultimate horizon of our mind is to be the future as a concept and as a project. We would like to try to go beyond the discourse analysis without falling into futurology. In dealing with just emerging meanings, values and social practices, we would like to ask what results for us from the fact that we do not know something and cannot know.
In the search for new forms and species of reflection for discussions and lectures, we have included two accompanying events – Paweł Mościcki’s movie seminar “What is Happening?”, dedicated to the future visions in the cinema, and the White Mirror 2118 comic strip competition.
The conference is organized jointly by the Biennale Warsaw and the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw.
PROGRAMME
11.10
Instytut Kultury Polskiej UW
ul. Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28
sala 5
18:oo – opening lecture: Other worlds and utopian impulse
12.10
Instytut Kultury Polskiej UW
ul. Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28
sala 5
10:oo–12:oo Session 1. Ecology – environment – social life
participants: Takao Ishikawa (UW), Aleksandra Jach (Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi), Andrzej Marzec (UAM)
comments: Joanna Bednarek
host: Roman Chymkowski (UW)
12:3o–14:3o Session 2. Economics – economy – politics
participants: Agnieszka Mróz (Inicjatywa Pracownicza [Labour Initiative]), Wojciech Mejor (Kooperatywa Dobrze [Cooperative Well]), Maciej Szlinder (Polska Sieć Dochodu Podstawowego [Polish Network of Basic Income])
comments: Zofia Łapniewska (UJ)
host: Paweł Dobrosielski (UW)
16:oo–18:oo Session 3. Technology – media – communication
participants: Mirosław Filiciak (UH SWPS), Natalia Sielewicz (MSN w Warszawie), Piotr Szostak (“Gazeta Wyborcza”)
comments: Anna Nacher (UJ)
host: Iwona Kurz (UW)
13.10
Biennale Warszawa
ul. Mokotowska 29A
16:oo–19:oo The Roundtable – debate about the crisis of the imagination
participants: Paweł Mościcki (IBL PAN), Tomasz Kozak (UMCS), Joanna Sokołowska (Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi), Andrzej W. Nowak (UAM), Zofia Łapniewska (UJ), Marta Zimniak-Hałajko (UW)
host: Jan Sowa (Biennale), Iwona Kurz (UW)
