Cabinet of Futures, Valletta 2018’s latest exhibition being held at St Joseph the Worker Centre in Birkirkara is an art installation by Austrian group Time’s Up.

It explores how changes in our world – environmental, social and economic – impact day-to-day life.

Over the last few months, workshops held by the Austrian art and culture group Time’s Up invited the public to think about their ideal future, and to virtually create this future through art.

The ideas generated during these workshops come to life in this site-specific exhibition. This immersive, walkthrough exhibition creates a ‘proto-scientific’ laboratory atmosphere, inviting local individuals and communities to add their own touch to the scenario.

During the workshops, internationally renowned futurists, local experts and everyday citizens came together to share and discuss each of their imaginative scenarios, dreams and concerns.

With constant creative exchange from all walks of life, the hypothetical futures presented become sites that are continuously evolving into richer and ever-more tangible worlds.

The tangible embodiment of a possible future makes the imagination of one’s part in that future easier and more real.

Visitors are immersed in the future scenario, and encouraged to peer into factories, laboratories or a travel agency as they might be in 2047, allowed to listen in on everyday life conversations between citizens of this future in a staged bar environment, to read the newspaper and take various leaflets and postcards with them.

The audience is invited not just to observe but to investigate, to curiously explore what they find surrounding them and actively create meaning in the world, in a seriously playful way of getting to know and imagine how one would like the future world to be.

The future is an interesting place; we will all spend the rest of our lives there.

Cabinet of Futures runs at St Joseph the Worker Centre, Bwieraq Street, Birkirkara until November 24. Opening hours between 4 and 8pm.

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