The Science of Imagination

As a cultural phenomenon, science-fiction is a final chord or epitaph equally describing the accomplishment and the ideological collapse of modernity; at the same time, it is a precursor of the following, confused, post-period, that continues to this day, and it is the last future-oriented genre. Of course this situation is not this simple, for when science-fiction talks of the future, it is in fact very much thinking about the present; when it describes life far from Earth, it is in fact painting a portrait of its direct context.

The related exhibition The Science of Imagination displaying works by international contemporary artists dealt with the European and North-American culture of the 1945–1989 period, in order to present how the atmosphere of the Cold War era with its scientific facts, ideologies or apocalyptic visions has become a deep and inspiring source of artistic creativity and contemporary culture.

This publication came into being not so much as documentation for the exhibition as an extension to it, a project to be seen in parallel with the show, with the same works of art at its core: through the essays of thirteen authors well-acquainted with the thirteen artists, it establishes a distinctly broad, multi-layered field of association, diffusely intertwined and loosely structured, presenting various systems of relationships between historical events, academic and cultural theories, people, stories, and works of art. We received the widest variety of solutions in response, from relatively conventional analyses displaying a comprehensive theoretical framework to short works of fiction.

Featured artists: Pawel Althamer, Gerard Byrne, Csákány István, Marine Hugonnier, Kaszás Tamás, Kokesch Ádám, Chris Marker, Anna Molska, Deimantas Narkevicius, Panamarenko, Daniel Roth, Saso Sedlacek, Jane and Louise Wilson

Language: English