the future is now | 2012
the future is now is a method for approaching places in the city which temporarily have no destination ... like empty shops for example.
• How can an artist be present and active without manipulating the direct environment too drastically?
• How can an artist take part in the local economy and the social tissue?
• What kind of images and conversations does this taking part produce?
In order to generate work, artists often make use of a specific urban context - be it counsciously or unconsciously. Ater their projects have found an end they often had a strong impact but what was 'triggered' does not find continuation ... with the result that it soon fades away. The terrein and situation is abandoned and the question of what the merit of the artistic intervention really was, arises.
pop-up goes poooooop-up
Borrowing from pop-up culture which declares spaces as ad-hoc shops in order to rather promote a product instead of making a win with it, the future is now promotes 'being attentive' to the over-all urban situation of the spot under consideration. Departing from this attentiveness a real as well as imaginable productivity should slowly poooooop-up.
coming and going
the future is now is locating and using places in the city which are ‘awaiting a bigger change', such as abandoned or underused spaces, spaces for sell or to rent, etc. The aim is to get more advised with how 'to come and go' in urban times, where cultures and systems of one kind 'arrive' and 'vanish' within and from each other in a high frequency.
artificial routines
the future is now works with artificial routines. Considering it an editing process, the artificial routine filters the work while working ... until it becomes the approach which integrates in and complements to the place. Artificial routines transform by nature. They can be considered an ever adapting format or rather an un-format: training civil behavior 'in public', as a group of 'public people'.
postponing the product - exposing the work
The place, 'as it comes' is considered the very material. It seems that instead of 'dealing with' it, rather 'walking through' it, again and again, as a means to get rid of certain inherited views and undo an imported pre-knowledge, is a way to find out what kind of un/productivity it needs. What can we practically do and when exactly ? Is it time to produce and expose or not ?
there seems to emerge a sort of protocol ...
* find the place (where in the city does one want to be/work?)
* find interstitches, acknowledge the place's embedment
* edit the location-specific approach through practicing: use personal approaches, interests, ways of working. Sense with which kind of presence one could continue to stay 'there'.
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a reference text on practical freedom: The Idea of E-ducating the Gaze ... / Jan Masschelein (download <<<)
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and the introduction to the book Locating the Producers on the value of duration: An End to the Beginning, the Beginning of the End by Paul O'Neill & Claire Doherty (download <<<)
CHANGING ROOM
the future is now comes forth from the development of Changing Room:
2011: Changing Tents (Kaaitheatre/Brussels) <<<
2010: Come & Change (Micromarché/Brussels) <<<
SHOP SHOP
at present and as a continuation of a Permeable City - workshop at a.pass a group of people is developing Shop Shop, a commercial place where transactions are made.
more on Shop Shop <<<
context :
radical_hope, the future is now
participants, guests :
Bart Van den Eynde, Sven Goyvaerts, Dolores Hulan, Heike Langsdorf, Ariane Loze, Karl Philips, Michiel Reynaert, Raquel Santana de Morais, Carlotta Scioldo
partner :
a.pass, Permeable City
© pictures :
radical_hope