ABOUT
THE EDITOR
Madeleine Schwinge
Madeleine Schwinge is a conceptual artist, curator, researcher and facilitator. Her multidisciplinary work is a manifesto for transformation on an individual and social level. It embraces artistic practice, artistic research, writing, curation, education and lecture, all under the framework entitled EMBARKING FUTURE.
Merging artistic research, speculative design and systemics with philosophical and sociological questions, she addresses key issues of our time such as cultural, ecological, economical and technological shifts. In 2020 she founded the re:future Lab to explore how art as a conceptual medium of thought and practice, and in dialogue with other disciplines can foster knowledge transfer and social change.
THE PUBLISHER
re:future Lab, Berlin, Photo: Copyright Werner Huthmacher
The re:future Lab is an art space and open platform for future-themed contemporary art and transdisciplinarity.
Its mission is to put forward future advocates who address the urgent upheavals on the edge of our time and to foster new narratives for social and cultural shifts.
Its activities take the form of art exhibitions, talks, lectures, panels, conferences, editions and publications, art mediation, art advisory, and an incubator program to help navigate better towards unknown territories.
THE RESEARCH APPROACH
Research model, illustrating various fields of mutation including pioneering future protagonists. Copyright Madeleine Schwinge
The research is structured in the form of a twofold approach: identify fields of mutation and detect protagonists within these fields.
The first stage is about investigating the fields where transformation is already taking place, whether in change of moral and ethics, shift in perception and logic, obsolete normatives, social ecology, habitats and biotops, migration and diversification, technology, scientific theory and practice, interrelations and our way to life, work and communicate.
The second step is to detect the pioneering protagonists, who have the unique assets to reshape the future, particularly the willingness to take risks, the ability to associate, to decode and to transpose, resilience, self-efficacy and the faculty to cooperate.
Presenting them in the EMBARK! feature magazine may inspire a wider public, nourish hopes, strengthen faith, and encourage the pathways to a better future.