Welcome
AF develops and runs projects for finding, collecting, studying and creating images of the futures. Our interdisciplinary projects combine creative, experimental, artistic and participatory approaches with futures research.
AF tackles the challenges of visual documentation, illustration and storytelling about futures. The future is not an objective physical reality, available to visit for shooting footage. Our solution is to seek out subjective imagination in participatory projects. The tools for understanding what is at stake and what is possible come from the field of futures studies, communications theories, visual arts theory and practice.
AF started as an experimental set-up and the small unit keeps adapting and evolving as technological, cultural, research and media landscapes themselves continue to change.
Summer and fall '22
Agence Future partners with the research group Open Time | Applied Futures Research where Maya is the senior researcher and UNESCO Chairholder in Images of the Futures and Co-creation. In this framework the AF team ensures participatory observation of media, arts and design projects in the international clusters of case studies. The joint project Poly-x that links these different clusters is an action research experimentation with polylogues for the cocreation of images of the futures.
With Poly-X we will take part in the baraza of WAZA’s public program at Documenta in Kassel and Radicale’s Parade at Saint Cirq Lapopie.
In the mean our mixed media workspace in Hoboken, Fulu Waterjacket is being developed for non-profit rental and residencies.
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AF with WAZA at Documenta
Agence Future joined WAZA at Documenta 15 - Lumbung for four days of polylogue aimed at the co-creation of various images of the futures of artistic practices.
Half a dozen in depth conversations and as many quick-fire conversations as well as two dedicated workshops contributed to a videologue, relating and visualising different perspectives on what artists, their communities and subcultures can mean for the futures and how they see themselves in the long run. Our conversation partners were our guides as we considered what contemporary artistic practices may contribute to and get from personal, local and global futures.
Through accounts of our own co-created futures explorations and by sharing and repeating the processes behind them, by listening to the stories of others, by recording, selecting and editing live in the thick of the action, we took part in Waza’s Baraza to the full extent. By engaging in a process relying on successful multi-vocality, sharing our earlier harvests, picking low-hanging fruits together and planting seeds for tomorrow’s crop, we take part in the event’s Lumbung.
Documenta has been labelled a key rendezvous for contemporary art and as such can provide a convivial setting for the scaled polylogues that our practice seeks to enliven. Already understood as a driving force transforming the artworld, DocumentaXV putting collectivity centre stage, provides a natural setting for attempting futures-oriented co-creation.
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