For our call for proposals 2013, the Belluard Bollwerk International and the Migros Culture Percentage were looking for playful and radical artistic projects dealing with FUTURE NOSTALGIA, inspired by the festival’s 30th anniversary.

In the last century, modernization processes accelerated at a rapid pace and, along with globalisation, caused great change all over the world. Nostalgia, the longing for a lost time and space, has become a global phenomenon.

The idealisation that comes with nostalgic remembering is often regressively oriented and sometimes even part of dangerous nationalist discourses. However, nostalgia is not only about the past, it can also be prospective, creative and critical. Can we rethink nostalgia? Can we discover a dynamic element in the sentiment? How can we relate to the past in an era where what is crucial today is no longer valid in the near future? Tomorrow is so discontinuously different from today that it already escapes the vitalising force of our imagination.

FUTURE NOSTALGIA is an oscillation between what has been, what is and what could be. The past opens up a multitude of potentialities, possibilities or developments. Rather than the end reaction to longing, nostalgia can be understood as a mode for provoking a future-oriented goal.

Out of 670 applications, a professional jury selected 5 projects by Hannes Bär & Jonas Oehrli; Maria Guggenbichler; Kapwani Kiwanga; Gosie Vervloessem, Naomi Kerkhove & Wendy Van Wynsberghe and Julien Chavaillaz & Adrien Gaillard. For every artist or collaboration the term FUTURE NOSTALGIA triggered something different.

Jury

Sally De Kunst, Gabrielle Gawrysiak, Matthieu Goeury, Robert Hamelynck, Isabelle Krieg, Oliver Schmid, Nienke Terpsma, René Walker

Mentoring

Sophia New

With the support of: Migros culture percentage.