Stuttgart. Micro-future is the term Philipp von Hilgers from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science uses to describe the immediate future, encapsulated in the next three seconds. »We are often looking at very short time slots«, he explains, for example in decisions to buy a product, which can be influenced online by extra offers generated automatically. Hilgers is one of four experts interviewed by Katya Sander for her new video installation »Production of Future. A Science Fiction about Counting«, currently showing at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. As in her earlier works, which also address the power of images and language, the artist undermines the literal meaning of the exhibition title by not visualising approaches to solutions, of the type that currently concern politicians, looking instead at the processes whereby the future is generated, exploring the stochastic tools. Four agreeably short interviews offer insights into what future means in their field of specialisation and how this looks at present. It is illuminating to see how the interviews consider the world of the future: Emanuel Didier for example explores how statistics influence the future because they serve as the basis for decisions. Ultimately however they can only represent probabilities calculated with data from the past. In other words, data as old as science fiction. Cultural studies expert Philipp von Hilgers reads the world in digital signs, sociologist Herbert Kalthoff observes that risk managers and currency traders act in three different time frames in their jobs and for Stefan Heidenreich, who works in the field of media studies, the future is nothing but a »legal construct« when it comes to the financial instruments dubbed »futures«. Oil, for example, is traded via this kind of instrument. Heidenreich analyses these deals as gambling »on labour«, with the future being used as the »possibility of the present«. The interviews therefore do not give a general impression of dealing with the future; instead what is articulated blossoms up – like crystals springing from closed academic caverns. The common denominator remains the fact that the future is computed from the data of the past. And with this pragmatic result – if not before – it becomes clear that Sander is not pursuing universal questions, for example about the future of the earth, which are currently being pondered in connection with the possible consequences of climate change. For in the 21st century the future no longer means utopian playgrounds, but is associated with vigorously developing technological solutions and calling on the general public to scale down their CO2-intensive lifestyles. However the possibilities explored always remain within the framework of capitalism and, in locations such as modernist glass corridors in the protected islands of research, generate friction vis-à-vis its notions of a transparent knowledge society. The intention is also for viewers to reflect on the mise-en-scène too: the clearest reference to Sanders’ deconstruction of the settings she has selected and to the entire wide-ranging issue of the process of producing the future is performed by actress Susanne Sacchse as the artist’s alter ego: in her roles she alternates between being a comic figure and an interface with the future, a commentator, audience guide and questioner. She pops up in a blue box as an interviewer; between the interviews she runs through the exemplary urban interiors and exteriors and rolls out a portable screen aka the illusion machine of cinema.
On the other hand, the interviews are also combined with typical background images of social statistics in daily papers: shots of a classroom with first-graders and lively city train intersections. As a metaphorical aside, we find scenes from a botanical garden, where a historical attempt to order knowledge systematically can be read as a didactic pathway concerning production in the future. And sometimes the narrator’s footsteps or the evocative sound of the screen being unfurled or rolled up echo though the video installation, through our still unfurnished future.
Despite the complexity of the content, Sander has succeeded in coming up with a simple visual solution for the installation, repeatedly deploying significant devices such as monochrome test cards and the portable screen. Two projections are shown in each of the four berths arranged around the room, the works staggered so that the sequence moves forward by one instalment in each case. A reproduction film makes it possible for the image projected to appear on both sides of the screens. This allows the videos to be shown inverted as if reflected in a mirror, another device in Sanders’ repertoire, which serves to reveal the influence of formal effects on a subsequent outcome, be it in the documentary or fictional realm. The wind of the future does not blow through the bourgeois neighbourhood in which the Künstlerhaus is located. You feel like opening the windows to let insights about how the future is deployed in capitalism sweep out onto the street.
Translated by Helen Ferguson