Prognoses about Movements

Prognoses do not only foretell the future, they also influence it. Nowadays, predictions are usually made about scientific, technical or economic developments, but hardly play any role as a cultural praxis. Analogous to the twelve "Economic Scholars", the FU Berlin and the Theater Hebbel am Ufer co-developed a project featuring twelve artists and cultural scientists as "Movement Scholars", commissioned to make prognoses about social "movements", e.g., the future relationship between the body, technology and forms of knowledge, or the future dynamics caused by migration and globalisation. The predictions were then adapted to the stage as a theatre performance. The Berlin-based Movement Research Centre organized an accompanying interdisciplinary workshop that addressed predictions from the perspective of their historic development and forms of cultural representation.

A "Prognoses on Movements" book including the analyses from the 2007 workshop, the lectures and a comprehensive documentation of the performances at the congress in 2008 will be published in spring 2009.

Artistic director: Sibylle Peters
Research directors: Gabriele Brandstetter, Kai van Eikels
Participants: Guillermo Gomez-Pena (MEX/USA), Francois Jullien (F), Bojana Kunst (SLO), Ligna, Walid Raad (RL/USA), Joshua Sofaer (GB), Mamoru Takayama (J) and others

Venues in Berlin: Hebbel am Ufer, Freie Universität Berlin
Schedule: May 2007 - June 2008
Publication: Spring 2009