2052 – News from the Future

The Wuppertal Institute, the Faculty of Art and Design of the Bergische Universität Wuppertal and the Pina Bausch Centre invite you to two joint initiatives in the fields of art, culture, design and sustainability:

2052 – News from the Future is a “future performance” with film, readings and music. The speakers will lead a thought experiment, in which they and the audience imagine what the world will be like in the year 2052. The event is the launch of transform.NRW, which is funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the funding programme Kooperationsplattformen 2022. It is being implemented in cooperation with 14 partners from the fields of science, business, local government, art, design and culture.

At the same time, the event will launch the scenography workshop SOMETHING NEW – New Materials, which runs from 16 to 23 November 2023.

The future Pina Bausch Centre and the Szenografie-Bund are collaborating with the Wuppertal Institute to offer four workshops in 2023 and 2024. The overarching theme is sustainability in stage and costume design – SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING BLUE.

Click here to register for the event.

TRANSFORM.NRW:
Transforming our economy and society towards sustainable development is the central challenge of our time. This requires us to implement sustainable economic and social visions, values, practices, and cultural techniques – in short: to effect cultural change. Actors in the cultural and creative industries, artists and people working in the field of sustainable design have already acquired transformational skills as part of their education. We have established a diverse research and practice landscape in North Rhine-Westphalia, with a range of art and design courses, faculties and universities, state-wide support structures for the creative industries, local independent art scenes and municipally controlled cultural institutions.

A transformation towards a sustainable economy and society requires collaboration: science, humanities and artistic practice need to work together and learn from each other. In order to realise the transformative potentials of this process, we need open and hybrid collaborative spaces where encounters, experimentation and innovation can take place. We have therefore developed a transdisciplinary transformation and cooperation platform within the project transform.NRW. The project's focus is on making the transformative power of art, culture, design and sustainability available to ongoing change processes. The centrepiece of this platform will be a digital hub for design interaction, where best-practice examples, methods, and toolkits can be shared and developed further in experimental spaces. The platform also serves as a working, learning and experience space and will be developed through intensive feedback and test cycles in the context of actor networking, analogue design processes, workshops and a symposium. We will thus create a structured, transdisciplinary transfer of knowledge and methods for sustainability transformation.

The project partners are: Bergische Universität Wuppertal/Faculty of Art and Design, Wuppertal Institute, Bundesstadt Bonn/Dezernat IV – Department of Sports and Culture, Circular Valley Stiftung, Creative.NRW, Ecosign/Akademie für Gestaltung, Folkwang University of the Arts, Handwerkskammer Düsseldorf, Kulturbüro Wuppertal, Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft e.V., Kulturraum Niederrhein e.V., Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland GmbH, NKR – Neuer Kunstraum, PACT Zollverein – Choreographisches Zentrum NRW, Pina Bausch Centre and ökoRAUSCH Think Tank e.V.

SOMETHING NEW – NEW MATERIALS:
The joint launch event on 16 November 2023 also marks the beginning of the second workshop SOMETHING NEW – New Materials. Following a collaborative approach, theatre practitioners will explore new biological materials that could be relevant for theatre. The event features conceptual workshops with a range of industry experts, as well as practical sessions in which participants will develop new models for artistic uses of biological materials. Over the course of six days, we will present existing sustainability initiatives, while leading experts will give keynote lectures and workshops to introduce interesting developments in the fields of sustainability and culture. Speakers include pioneers such as Dr Tanja Beer & Freddy Comb (Griffith University Queensland Australia), Anja Gast (costume designer) and Barbara Zippel (natural dye manufacturer), Friederike Hoberg (TU Berlin, Myco Colours), Sarah Meyers (Meyers Fügmann Berlin), Irene Purasachit (designer), Dr Emilija Veselov (researcher and designer), Axel Wähling (NIG) and Carolin Baedeker (Wuppertal Institute). Urs Dierker and Anja Gast will act as curators, hosts and workshop leaders.

This second workshop in the series of residencies at the Pina Bausch Centre in Wuppertal is aimed at scenographers, theatre technicians, sustainability consultants, craftspeople, artists and other interested parties – also from the fields of architecture, design and ecology. There will be opportunities to experiment with different materials, production methods and aesthetics. We want to encourage the people who are imagining, inventing and building spaces for dance, theatre, film, exhibitions and performance to take a new look at sustainability and our global responsibility for ecological, economic and social working practices.

Two further workshops in the series will continue to address the theme of sustainability in stage design in 2024: SOMETHING BORROWED – Circular Economy (1–9 March 2024) and SOMETHING BLUE – Art of the Future (June 2024).

The workshops are part of the project “A holistic approach to the Pina Bausch Centre”, which is supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation’s fund “Zero – Climate Neutral Art and Culture Projects”. Co-funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. The Pina Bausch Centre will be an inviting and highly sustainable contemporary arts centre that is open all day to welcome a broad range of people. In order to contribute to the protection of our climate and open up a space for discourses on a better future, we are therefore developing a comprehensive sustainability strategy that will be in place in time for the opening of the Pina Bausch Centre.

To learn more, visit:
https://www.szenografen-bund.de
https://wupperinst.org/das-institut