The symposium will take place inside the Pavillon. Please use the Oberwallstraße entrance.

More information and biographies of the speakers can be found here.

Where has the future gone and when was it abolished? For some time now, this question has indicated a certain paralysis of our political imagination. The general idea of the ultimate triumph of liberal capitalism has settled as a broad consensus in our cultural unconscious and is amplified by the ramifications of inexorable ecological and technological upheavals.

Today, dystopia and reality seem hardly distinguishable. Our contemporary present serves as vast material for speculative narratives. Have we reached a historical end? Are there ways out of the permacrisis? Since the 19th century, the myriad-genre of Science Fiction has held up a mirror to the respective »conditio humana«, its values, fears and limitations. Can Science Fiction offer tools to navigate through our uncertain times, towards alternative horizons and new forms of being human? The decentering and dissolving notion of being “human” today, harbors discomforts and dangers, but also potentials and hopefulness.

time schedule

5.00 – 5.45 pm: Hello darkness, my old friend with Theresia Enzensberger and Timo Feldhaus
Starting off from their respective novels Auf See and Mary Shelley’s Room, Theresia Enzensberger and Timo Feldhaus speak about novel forms of humanity, broken utopias, alternative futures and Mary Shelley.

5.45 – 6.00 pm: break

6.00 – 7.00 pm: Frankenstein’s Legacy with Filippo Andreatta, Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman
In light of an increasing climate anxiety, Filippo Andreatta, Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman talk about the contemporary relevance of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – notably the first Science Fiction horror story, created in the Year-without-Summer, a dystopian period due to a volcano eruption and the sulphurous fog that obscured the stratosphere and turned the sky yellowish – as well as science fiction’s potential to re-imagine humanity’s perspective towards earth and more-than-human forces.

7.00 – 7.30 pm: break

7.30 – 8.30 pm: Ex Machina with Shumon Basar, Iyad Rahwan and Elvia Wilk
Shumon Basar, Iyad Rahwan and Elvia Wilk discuss the dystopian and utopian potential of AI, the nature of its intelligence and virtuosity, as well as its representation in Science Fiction vis-a-vis the social and scientific status quo and outlook.

from 8.30 pm: open conversation / bar

Funded by Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation), by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media) and by E.ON Stiftung.