Futurism and Art

(3 Credits)

What happens when a state makes futurism a core priority? And how can artists, curators, and developers engage with this agenda, by speculating alternatives for a future worth living and building? This course examines how intellectuals and state officials have approached the idea of the future in the past and in the present. What were the political stakes of modernization theories and oppositional movements, such as Italian Futurism, Bolshevism, Afrofuturism, and Arab Futurism? And what can these histories tell us about Gulf/UAE futurism as both an aesthetic and a political project? Using the UAE's cultural and economic sectors as examples, we explore how the future of the UAE and its region is being imagined and constructed at arts institutions, such as the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Sharjah Art Foundation, and Diriyah Art Futures in Riyadh, and through the connections of the art world to real estate developers, oil companies, and AI. By researching these institutions’ language and aesthetics and co-designing and curating a group exhibition as the final project, students learn how art can transform the imagination into a space of active resistance and defiance against despair.