Hidden Futures: Prediction and Promise
May 8 @ 13:00 - May 9 @ 20:00
Our futures are made by technologies. How do data, algorithms, platforms, and code structure the future? What kinds of visions of the future are designed and foreseen by scientific practices and technological development? Who is included in such visions? How can we act in the midst of our technological present?
Together with PACT Zollverein, an international center for the performing arts working in the fields of dance, performance, theater, media, the KHK c:o/re organizes the event series “Hidden Futures”. The series brings together activists, researchers, and artists, opening new perspectives on the increasing complexity of digital life. Here, the future is not merely conceived as a distant vision, but also as a concrete reality embedded in the present – inscribed in data and platforms, in decision-making systems, in landscapes, infrastructures, in actions, and in social contexts.
The second edition, “Hidden Futures: Prediction and Promise”, explores how technological development creates future scenarios, shapes human and nonhuman life, and forms social and ecological contexts in the present. On May 8 and 9, 2026, we will engage in a series of conversations, walks, and tours to unpack how the future is being made and decided, with and by technologies.
On May 8, we are taking a bus tour into the Rhenish mining area: Where the massive pit of the Hambach surface mine still stands today, a new lakeland is set to emerge in the coming decades – one rich in ecological, economic, and tourist potential. In Elsdorf, Manheim, and Bürgewald, we meet people, including artist Silke Schatz and landscape and open space planner Daniela Karow-Kluge, who are planning, accompanying, or questioning this structural transformation.
On May 9, we will meet at PACT Zollverein in Essen, where artists and researchers will engage in a dialogue to explore different forms of knowledge and practices that go beyond the promises of technological developments. The future is conceived here as a present shaped by predictive systems that already organize and yield reality. With Choy Ka Fai, Ren Loren Britton, Nonhuman Nonsense, Nelly Y. Pinkrah, Yi Gu, Tomas Percival and many more.
Find further information and tickets on PACT’s website here.