We look at GES-2 from the future and seek answers to questions about the cultural institutions of today.
The philosopher Armen Avanessian, guest co-author of the second act of the General Rehearsal project, uses imagination and speculative techniques in his work. He constructs possible future scenarios to determine the present. At the forum Imagining the Institutes of the Future, Armen Avanessian and V–A–C Artistic Director Francesco Manacorda discuss possible directions for the development of art and cultural institutes. How to engage audiences in more active and informed participation in cultural production? What needs to be changed in the conception and activities of institutions to meet the interests of a wide audience? What should museums, theatres, cultural centers, concert halls and music clubs of the XXI century look like and do? The meeting in the format of an open forum takes place in the space of the Demos installation by Andreas Angelidakis, which reproduces the structure of an ancient Greek people's assembly. All visitors are invited to search for solutions and identify new problems facing cultural institutions.
Imagining the Institutes of the Future continues with the public session of the Faculty of Mediation, dedicated to non-canonical approaches to education and the search for new forms of audience participation.
Armen Avanessian is an Austrian philosopher, literary theorist. He is aneditor at the Merve Verlag publishers and in charge of the theory program at the Volksbühne theatre in Berlin. His scientific approach is based on the hypothesis that the future defines our present. In 2015, together with director Christopher Roth, he produced the film Hyperstition which uses ontology, science fiction, and sociology to question the concept of time.
Francesco Manacorda is the artistic director of the V–A–C Foundation, previously having held this post at Tate Liverpool Museum. Among his curatorial projects are the Liverpool Biennale (2016) and the New Zealand Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). He was a jury member of the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009).
