What does it mean to think about the future? - What can people living in 2022 do -
The School of the Future is a collaborative project between Tokyo Midtown and Ars Electronica that focuses on artists, artworks and the people who interact with them through a variety of initiatives that aim to think about the society of the future.
However, the future vision will vary depending on the social and cultural context. Thinking about the future is abstract, to begin with.
What does "thinking about the future" mean to the people living in 2022?
What are the roles of towns, cities and communities as elements of our future?
In this article, we welcome Michiaki Matsushima, the head of editorial content of WIRED Japan, the media where future is realized, and director of the exhibition "2121 Futures In-Sight" held at 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, and Emiko Ogawa from Ars Electronica.
(Interviewer: Nami Fujitani, Producer, Ars Electronica Collaborative Project, TOKYO MIDTOWN)
Speaker
Michiaki Matsushima
As a head of editorial content of WIRED Japan, a media organization which actualizes futures, worked on: WIRED.jp／WIRED SZ MEMBERSHIP／WIRED MAGAZINE ISSUES (the latest issue being VOL. 43 "THE WORLD IN 2022”)／WIRED CONFERENCES／WIRED Sci-Fi PROTOTYPING LAB／WIRED SPECULATIVE ZONE. Before joining WIRED JAPAN in 2018, was Editor-in-Chief of the Editorial Department of NHK Publishing. Moonshot Ambassador for Japan's Cabinet Office. Translator of "Novacene" (James Lovelock). Born in Tokyo and lives in Kamakura.
Emiko Ogawa
Emiko Ogawa is a Japanese curator and artist based in Linz, Austria. She is Head of Prix Ars Electronica which is known as the world’s most time-honored media arts competition organized by Ars Electronica. She has worked for the launch of the new Ars Electronica Center in 2008 and since then she has curated the exhibition for the Ars Electronica Center, Ars Electronica Festival and Ars Electronica Export.
What does thinking about the future mean?
Nami
Let me begin by asking what thinking about the future means to you both?
Michiaki
What does it mean to think about the future? This is the central question of the 2121 Futures In-Sight exhibition currently held at 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT.
Nami
Do you mean "thinking about thinking about the future” rather than “thinking about the future”?
Michiaki
Yes. We all think about the future in our daily lives to a greater or lesser extent. However, I thought it would be interesting and meaningful to raise the question, "what does the act of thinking about the future itself mean?"
Nami
What does "thinking about thinking about the future" mean to you?
Michiaki
Ultimately, I think it is about asking what humans are. Why are we the only ones on the planet that possess the concept of "future"? Why can we imagine not only our future three or five years from now but also a future in which we will never exist, such as 1000 years from now? What kind of civilization and society have we created using this ability? Questioning is an exciting and intriguing act. Through responding to such fundamental questions, the perspective of our future continuously changes.
Nami
Is this exhibition about trying to find answers?
Michiaki
Yes. We have 72 leading artists from in and out of Japan who have contributed their works and texts. By bringing together a wide range of questions and perspectives regarding the future and exhibiting them individually, the participants can experience that there is no fixed future and that futures are something we can question or weave together.
Nami
Being able to search for futures by ourselves is a vision the School of the Future aims to achieve. Do you think we won't find the answers to our questions unless we actively search for them?
Michiaki
I think so. In this exhibition, we created a tool called "Future Compass" to navigate ways to think about the future. This tool helps create a question about the future by combining three genres of words: "5W1H", "Time", and "Verb". We ask each participant to derive insights into thinking about the future from these questions.
Nami
The word "compass" comes up a lot in the School of Future project. What do you think about that, Emiko?
Emiko
I always thought that thinking about the future is about each person holding a compass for the future. A compass is necessary because it is a tool that helps us find our way without being influenced by somebody else's opinion in a society where information is overflowing. Thinking is a laborious and tedious task for the human brain, but it is essential for human beings.
Art can help us to adjust our compass.
For example, at Tokyo Midtown's School of the Future project, I saw the artwork in the garden. I was intrigued and thought, "Wow, that looks fun, but what is this?”. Then I was drawn into the question posed by the artwork and began to think. This process can change the position of the needle of your compass. By repeating this process, you will find your way forward and your original perspective on the future. Perhaps people from all over the world come to the Ars Electronica Festival every year to adjust their compass.
SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE -OPEN STUDIO- "FUTURE PICNIC Exhibition" -Our New Commons-
What do we need to do to create a better future?
Michiaki
Jules Verne, a science fiction novelist, known for “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, once said: “Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real”. Nietzsche said that "the future influences the present as much as the past". Nowadays, billionaires such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are trying to realize their dream of flying rockets into space. This is not an inevitable result of the accumulation of technology, but rather an example of how youths who were influenced by science fiction are influencing the present and creating a new culture or civilization. On the other hand, we must be aware of the violence of the future. The concept of a future that everyone should aim for or a correct future may oppress other futures that could have arrived. We must be aware that there will always be people who will fall out from a specific type of future.
Emiko
For example, this year at Ars Electronica, we hosted the "Festival University" where we invited 100 students from all over the world to a summer camp to think about the future. It would have been a biased discussion if only European students were invited. To think about a favourable future for one country may cause the opposite for another country, which I think is a situation we may witness more. It will be necessary for those who host such discussions to pay attention to how many different perspectives are included.
Nami
The difficulty of having a diverse discussion is illustrated by the tears of the President at COP26 in Glasgow last year. How can we create the space for such discussions?
Emiko
There's an artwork I'd like to introduce. This piece caught my attention the most at this year's Ars Electronica Festival. "A Father's Lullaby" was created by an Iranian American female artist called Rashin Fahandej. The work is constructed from videos of several fathers on federal probation singing lullabies and sharing their stories. Rashin was inspired to create this work while participating in an artist residency program held by the city of Boston. Because the mayor's office was opened to artists, she was able to create an innovative and heart-warming work related to issues in the city.
“A Father’s Lullaby” by Rashin Fahandej
Nami
Are you suggesting that we should involve more artists in discussing futures?
Emiko
Yes. I think that artworks inspired by discussions give the public a chance to think about social issues in a fun and personal way. The ability of artists to create essential questions is needed not only in society but also in the political arena.
Michiaki
In my opinion, the fewer politicians have to do for the future, the better. As you can see from COP26, which deals with the climate crisis in our global commons, it is almost impossible to discuss and agree on an initiative through discussions held at the nation-state level. From now on, it's crucial to build up small agreements at the community level, such as towns, rather than trying to make agreements in large political arenas. We need a "resolution of life", so to speak, a state we are aware of that our daily lives are linked to global issues. Art can raise that resolution.
Emiko
Projects held at Tokyo Midtown or the Ars Electronica Festival create such small communities. I think it's important that these communities are multi-layered. Sustainability is about a society where people can move back and forth between different communities and adjust their compass.
Ars Electronica Center Florian Voggeneder
Nami
I think Tokyo Midtown needs to continue creating communities, a place for discussion in a way that mixes a more diverse group of people.
Michiaki
Communities are said to be divided into two types: association-type and neighbourhood-type. Association type is a community of people who gather under a particular purpose, such as the love of art. A neighbourhood type is a community of people who live or gather in the same place simultaneously. Tokyo Midtown is an association type community where people who resonate with ideas and values gather. Yet, if we think about Tokyo Midtown as a community rooted in a specific place we cannot ignore the context of that place.
Nami
What kind of diversity does Tokyo Midtown possess as a place?
Michiaki
Nobel Prize winning author Kazuo Ishiguro mentioned "diversity within a 15-minute walk". Before the pandemic, I used to travel all over the world, but in the end, I only met people with similar values. When you can't go anywhere, you realize how diverse the people who live within 15 minutes of your house are.
Emiko
The fact of travelling around the world and ending up meeting like-minded people sticks with me. Perhaps a shortcut to diversity is to get to know people who live close but who you didn't know before, as "A Father's Lullaby" I mentioned earlier does. We'd love to learn more about the diversity within a 15-minute walk of Tokyo Midtown.
Nami
Thank you very much. To think about the future, we have to start from where we are grounded. I hope we can create a place for diversity while keeping in touch with the people in Akasaka.
1st SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE FESTIVAL "ObOrO" by Ryo Kishi
