How might we decolonize the future, and cultivate an emancipated chronopolitics in relation to an undetermined not-yet? There is widespread consensus that we are living at the end – of democracy, of liberalism, of capitalism, of a healthy planet, of the Holocene, of civilization as we know it. T. J. Demos’ book Radical Futurisms. Ecologies of Collapse, Chronopolitics, and Justice-to-Come draws on radical futurisms and visions of justice-to-come emerging from the traditions of the oppressed –Indigenous, African-American, multispecies, anti-capitalist – as materialized in experimental visual cultural, new media, aesthetic practices, and social movements. It poses speculative questions about what comes after end-of-world narratives.

On the occasion of the launch of Radical Futurisms, a public discussion with the author takes place on March 21st at n.b.k., moderated by Lena Pozdnyakova and Luise Willer. This event is part of the ongoing series agrupa, which explores, through talks, workshops, screenings, and performances, the potentiality of intervention as a form of participatory art regarding different publics and institutions.

Participants

T. J. Demos is Professor of Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Director of its Center for Creative Ecologies. He writes widely about contemporary art, global politics, and ecology. His publications center on the conjunction of art and politics, examining the ability of artistic practice to invent innovative and experimental strategies that challenge dominant social, political, and economic conventions.

Lena Pozdnyakova is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Art History at Freie University Berlin, where she focuses on lifelike aspects in socially engaged practice. She is an alumna of the Design Theory and Pedagogy program at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles and has previously worked at University of California, Los Angeles, in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design.

Luise Willer is a Ph.D. student working on assemblies as emancipatory relational structures in contemporary art at the Collaborative Research Center Intervening Arts (Freie Universität Berlin). Previously, she studied Art History and Museology at the University of Heidelberg and the École du Louvre and worked for the Centre Pompidou in Paris.