Forecast

Exhibition of the artist members
of the Württembergischer Kunstverein
August 14 – September 19, 2021

Opening: Friday, August 13, 2021, 7 pm
Registration: zentrale(at)wkv-stuttgart.de

Exhibition venue
Construction fence surrounding the Kunstgebäude Stuttgart at the Schlossplatz

Introduction
In the ongoing pandemic, forecasts – as apparently objectively measurable predictions of coming developments – are a dominant feature of our everyday lives, which at the same time are deeply permeated by the unplannable. The calculations of experts’ models influence politics and law despite and because of these uncertainties; they guide all spheres of life connected to the common good, even into the realm of personal privacy. Causes such as the destruction of biodiversity, which is related to the pandemic’s origins, disappear behind diagrams, statistics, and columns of figures. The protection of vulnerable and socially marginalized persons becomes linked to a systemic relevance that seems to be ascertainable through statistics. Areas such as climate policy, demographics, and the economy are also shaped by the mathematical construction of a controllable future. Forecasts increasingly come to function more as anticipations and codifications of what is coming, which mask not only the fragmentariness and unpredictability but also people’s intuitive and creative scopes of action.

Under the title Prognose (Forecast) this year’s exhibition by the artist members of the Württembergischer Kunstverein is devoted to the statistical reshaping of the future. With a view to the uncertainties of the pandemic it is being mounted in the public space in the form of a poster exhibition on the construction fence now surrounding the Kunstgebäude at the Schlossplatz. Due to limited space, participants are restricted to a maximum of 80 and chosen by a jury. Artists are reacting to the current crises with humour, irony, poetry, empathy, political commitment, criticism, and artistic imagination, they are rethinking and rein-venting a future beyond a forecastable factual state.