3 Future: What Will Be – or Would Have Been
Duel or Duet by Charlotte Eifler & Leni Hoffmann HfG Karlsruhe & Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts
Matthias Bruhn (HfG Karlsruhe) Delta Real Ensemble Moderation: Julika Hing Students of Karlsruhe University of Education Students of Karlsruhe University of Music
Art opens up social spaces, intervenes in them, and reshapes them — not merely to comment on existing conditions, but to imagine and assert new possibilities. Speculative futures and artistic utopias seek to make structures of power visible, to shift them, or to call them into question. Spaces of freedom are meant to emerge where the present has not yet made room for them. But how will we look back on these artistic visions of the future? Will art, in its struggle for freedom, have surrendered its own autonomy — or arrived at itself in a new way?
Article 5 of the German Basic Law states: “Everyone has the right freely to express and disseminate opinions in speech, writing and pictures.” This requires both a forum and a format: “Freedom and Function of Art” offers an opportunity to step outside one’s own bubble, because every opinion deserves to be heard — and also questioned.
The inexhaustible topic is divided into three temporal perspectives: The opening event on May 8 focused on the present, “How It Is – and Could Be,” featuring a duel or duet between Jörg Mainka and Richard David Precht. The past was explored on May 22, when Astrid Dröse and Thomas Seedorf discussed “How It Was – and Could Have Been.” The final event on June 5 turns toward the future, with Charlotte Eifler and Leni Hoffmann speculating on “How It Will Be – or Would Have Been.”
Each event is accompanied by musical contributions from students and, on May 8, by the Vokaloktett Karlsruhe, presenting works by composers who challenged the norms and conventions of their time. All conversational concerts take place at the Wolfgang Rihm Forum of the Karlsruhe University of Music and begin at 7:30 pm.
As HfM Rector Matthias Wiegandt emphasizes, “Freedom of expression is of outstanding importance for our university — not only because of its constitutional significance and its role in a democratic civil society, but also because it constitutes a necessary condition for artistic, pedagogical and academic discourse.”
The series was conceived by the three professors of the Karlsruhe University of Music: Markus Hechtle (Composition), Thomas Seedorf (Musicology) and Christoph Seibert (Music Informatics). Participants in the discussions include students and faculty members from the Karlsruhe University of Music, the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe, the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, the Karlsruhe University of Education, KIT, and the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. The audience is explicitly invited to participate and take a position.
The three events are supported by the RIEMSCHNEIDER Foundation, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. In Karlsruhe, the foundation supports, among others, the universities of music, art and design, and aims to foster intellectual exchange between these institutions.
