Training for the Future is a utopian training camp founded by artist Jonas Staal, curated and co-programmed by Florian Malzacher. Its stated aim is reclaiming the means of production of the future at a time of systemic political, economic and environmental crises.
This third chapter of the training camp is titled WE DEMAND A MILLION MORE YEARS. It addresses the subjects of chronopolitics – the politics of time – at a moment we are out of time. Most politicians do not dare to speak of anything further than their “children’s children”: a mere two generations. How to learn – to train – for multigenerational futures for all of us, human and non-human alike?
The installation of the training camp in this exhibition is itself made out of different layers of time. You encounter stacks of defunct synthetic tires, a contemporary archaeology of the economic boom known as the “Italian miracle,” that was followed by a major financial crisis. You encounter hardened oil: millions of years of earth memory that are stored in fossil fuels. And you encounter the fossil in fossil fuels: ammonite fossils of one hundred million years old, that disappeared during the 5th mass extinction, 66 million years ago.
In the installation, you can also join a training yourself through video instruction, led by the fossils present in the space. For no one can train you in what a million years is, but a million years. And you can view video documentation showing the use of the space as a three-day training camp from June 28-30, which brought together large groups of trainees to be trained in alternative futures by artists, activists and philosophers.
Join our camp today, not as an audience, but as a trainee. To touch a million more years. To become a million more years. To demand a million more years.
Wwith contributions by Diana Anselmo & Giuseppe Comuniello (Al.Di.Qua.), Viviana Druga (Tarot de Berlin), Kite & Robbie Wing, Charl Landvreugd, Lorenzo Marsili, MELT (Ren Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr), Egle Oddo, Sista Oloruntoyin (ARRiVATi).
