(In)Tangible Future(s)

Evolving Eco-Empathic Infrastructure(s) for the Post-Anthropocene

In his much-cited essay “What is it like to be a bat?” Thomas Nagel (1974) highlights that the crucial thing is not to really know what it is like to be a bat, but to construct an imaginary concept of it.

Taking the thought that in a post-anthropocentric future, which has long since abandoned the belief in human superiority, ecological justice is concerned with justice between species as a starting point, this exhibition is conceptualized as an affective infrastructure enabling two kinds of experiences: on the one hand a critical look back to Planet A, where the lack of eco- and interspecies empathy led to an unbearable condition, on the other hand experiments fostering interspecies and non-human sensory dialogues, where the non-anthropocenic aesthetic experience is central for generating knowledge and empathy.

Empathic Apathy

Miguel Santos (PT), Margarita Köhl (AT)

A written correspondence about the meaning of empathy in diverse contexts (socio-political, technological, philosophical, ecological) forms the starting point of a collaborative narrative that slowly evolves and encourages interspecies dialogue: In this eco-empathic experiment the emerging text will used as a source to be interpreted by two or three or more inhabitants – raising the question of whether all this is somehow different versions of the same lack of empathy.

Sensory Archeology Tour

David Altweger (AT/ UK), Magdalena Haidacher (AT), Margarita Köhl (AT), Florian Ramsebner (AT), Kenji Araki (AT/JP)

This project adopts the Situationist concept of psychogeography as a radical political strategy which has the potential to transform our experience in public space. The mapping of the emotional impact gives insights into the power dynamics epitomized in the seemingly neutral built environment.

Mapping Complex System Dynamics

Magdalena Haidacher (AT)

By exploring a multidimensional interactive space, the connections between the SDGs and political decision-makers are made visible and virtually tangible. In this project, the non-existent implementation of the SDGs on Planet A is presented. Analysis of Planet A’s failures is important because the past must be viewed as a teacher for the present and the future of Planet B.

Tangible Past

Marilena Tumler (AT)

Planet A is gone, and with it the remnants of its history. So how can we make the history of Planet A tangible independently of time and place? In the interdisciplinary project Digital In&Out historians, designers, artists, game designers and museum educators focus on that question.

(In)tangible Future(s) – Museum of Artifacts or Practices?

Jasmin Fischbacher (AT), Margarita Köhl (AT)

This workshop addresses the question of which developmental paths can be identified that might bring us closer to this utopia. We start with an audio walk that will immerse us in a future scenario, from which we move back to the present. We collect, deconstruct and reorganize objects in the surroundings, assessing what we would like to take with us into the future museum.

Biography

Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Design includes two degree programs (BA and MA InterMedia) and the Research Group Design, which operates at the intersection of art, design and science perspectives and realizes praxeologically oriented research projects.

Credits

Margarita Köhl (AT), Jasmin Fischbacher (AT), Magdalena Haidacher (AT), Marilena Tumler (AT),

Florian Ramsebner (AT), David Altweger (AT/ UK)/ Faculty of Design/ Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences in cooperation with Miguel Santos (PT)/ LIDA-ESAD.CR, Leiria Polytechnic, Portugal