
Reaching Out for the Future: Fantasies of the Future around 1900
19 July 2019 - 27 October 2019Blackbox #7
Lunar expeditions, colonization of other planets, underwater worlds and fully automated cities: on the threshold to the twentieth century, the world appeared to be full of promise. The modern machine age had begun and promised seemingly endless possibilities. Fascinated by new technology and inspired by literary visions of the future, artists and caricaturists created images of the future rich in fantasy. Their motifs found wide distribution as illustrations in books or journals or in the form of collectible cards or postcards. Early film also looked toward the future with particular intensity and wide variety.
“Reaching Out for the Future” also kicks off a major outreach project at Bröhan-Museum that seeks to explore individual and collective, social models of the future. In the framework of a summer tour, our Mobile Future Lab will make stops in various Berlin neighborhoods. Visions and wishes for the city that take form here will be included in a growing portrait of the future at the exhibition. Artistic interventions, workshops, and events question fact and fiction and open ideas for a new world.
Mobile Future Lab
The Mobile Future Lab will be on summer tour and invites the public to join in and discover for themselves. Come join us in silk-screening sustainably produced jute bags to share your visions, wishes, and ideas for a future world.
Curator: Nils Martin Müller
Advertising motif: Gerwin Schmidt, Munich
Berlin in der Zukunft. Am Halleschen Tor, 1905, postcard, collection Peter Weiss, www.postcard-museum.com Düngt mit Kalkstickstoff, c. 1910, postcard, publisher: Julius Friede, Berlin, collection Peter Weiss, www.postcard-museum.com Alfred Herrmann, Frau im Mond (Regie Fritz Lang), 1929, Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen Zukunftsvisionen aus dem Jahr 1912, collective picture of the company Chocolat Lombart, Paris, collection Peter Weiss, www.postcard-museum.com Radiofrau, 1925, photography, collection Peter Weiss, www.postcard-museum.com Mobile Future Lab of the Bröhan-Museum