The Cars We Like

Symposium Program

6 Mar

18:00–19:45

Car in Film

with Arthur Summereder, Victor Kössl, Sandra Sieczkowski, Guus Diepenmaat, Kilian Jörg

From Hollywood Road Movies to Car Advertisements – film has been one of the central mediums that created our desires and ideas of the car-based good life. However, the moving image can also be turned against the moving-four-wheeler to create counter-imaginaries that critically subvert our mobilized affects.

In this panel, two local film-makers will give a work-in-process presentation of their respective cinematic works about car cultures and discuss the insights and perspectives that can be gained from this multi-sensory research angle. Arthur Summereder will present excerpts of his work about car fetishist scenes in the US and Japan, while the team around Victor Kössl will present their filmic work about National Parcs and cars as dispositives to render “Nature” a consumer product.

20:00 – 21:30

Car in the Arts

with Marta Navaridas, Rainer Prohaska, Conny Zenk

How can critical and future-minding approaches within the arts work with, in, around and against the car in an enabling way? Three local artists working with different mediums (performance, installation, photography, sound, public space interventions, etc.) will present their artistic engagement with (auto)mobility and discuss what can be learned for the future of mobility from this angle. Marta Navaridas will talk about about the highs and lows of her relationship with a Volvo V60, the ritual of fatalism and dreams of antromorphisation. Rainer Prohaska about his vision that art has the power to demonstrate human-related mobile structures in a future-orientated way with the effect that these experimental entities become a habit through repetition. And Conny Zenk about Bikefeminism and Soundbikes, and why we don’t care about your BMW.

7 Mar

18:00-19:45

Car as Safe Space

with Gretchen Sorin, Markus Wissen

One of the biggest challenges for any future mobility politics that want to lessen our car-dependency is that the automobile tends to serve as a safe space for people that are endangered by racist, misogynist or trans-phobic violence in the open public. By bringing together two experts in the field, we want to discuss the implications for a sustainable and inclusive politics beyond the car that does not fall short of this important insights. Gretchen Sorin will talk about her historical study Driving While Black – African-American Travel and the Road to the Civil Rights Movement while Markus Wissen will talk about his political analysis of the SUV as “imperial automobility”.

20:00-21:30
Car as a System

with La Deroute des Routes (Enora Chopard), Sand im Getriebe (Conrad Kunze), System Change not Climate Change (Mira Kapfinger)

Recent activist formations try to shift attention away from the car as an individual machine and make the underlying system visible that reproduces and enforces a neo-liberal paradigm of atomisation of society and precarisation of social bonds. We want to discuss the advantages and risks of this focus with representatives of System Change not Climate Change (Austria), La Deroute des Routes (France), Sand im Getriebe (Germany). Conrad Kunze will further elaborate on the material heritage of fascism inherent in contemporary car cultures and how this should alter our politics.

8 Mar

18:00-20:00

Utopias without Cars

with Agnes Sinai (Institut Momentum Paris) and Luc Schuiten

[Join via Zoom / Meeting ID: 886 9932 9157]

While classically modern utopias tend to envision a central role for the car, it is becoming more and more clear that sustainable utopias for flourishing futures need to do without the car as a central nexus. By presenting two very inspiring utopias from the francophone area, we want to stimulate the imaginary for post-fossil Utopian societies that can work with ecological collapse as a bringer of hope and transformation. Luc Schuiten will present his utopian designs for a “Vegetal City” and Agnes Sinai will talk about the scenario of a completely car-free Île-de-France in 2050.

20:00-22:00

The Cars We Like – Presentation of Workshop Results

In this closing-event, we will present the micro-utopian interventions we have built in the CARS WE LIKE-Workshop that, hosted by Rainer Prohaska and the Futurama.Lab took place for the entire week. There will be drinks, food, music and a lot of rolling fun.

About the Symposium:

Mobility is one of the major challenges of global ecological transformation and yet our ideas for innovation seem to be very limited and one-sided – especially when it comes to automobility. In this transdisciplinary workshop and symposium, we will work towards overcoming this dead zone of imagination by prefiguring better worlds, beyond an autocentered paradigm, for the many flourishing worlds of the future.

How can mobility become a source of inspiration in a devastated global society that mostly feels it has to or is obligated to move (to work, to the supermarket, etc.) and tends to forget the joys of doing so voluntarily and as a larger-than human practice?

The environment must no longer be adapted to the car, but the car to the environment is the leading motto of this 5-day-workshop led by the Futurama.Lab.

It will focus on introducing plurality and fun to the gray monotony of mundane traffic jams. Participants will be able to build dada-esque, modular forms of radically ecological cars using recycled materials, found objects and bike waste.

The accompanying symposium seeks to go beyond mere critique by combining theory and practice in a novel way.

Evening lectures, panels and screenings will investigate radical utopias of carfree worlds, the need to devise new safe spaces beyond the car, the car as a crucial nexus in the consumer-capitalist system and how the arts can take part in this transformation. International experts and visionaries whose perspectives are almost unknown in the German-speaking sphere will be introduced to stimulate a dynamic discourse for the radical transformation we need.

Symposium with:

Arthur Summereder & Victor Kössl, Sandra Sieczkowski, Guus Diepenmaat, Kilian Jörg, Marta Navaridas, Rainer Prohaska & Conny Zenk, Gretchen Sorin & Markus Wissen, La Deroute des Routes (Enora Chopard), Sand im Getriebe (Conrad Kunze) & System Change not Climate Change (Mira Kapfinger), Agnes Sinai (Institut Momentum Paris), Luc Schuiten and a presentation of The Cars We Like – workshop results

Workshop and Symposium curated by Kilian Jörg & the Futurama.Lab

Workshop:

4–8 Mar 2024, Mon, Tue: 14:00–19:00 /

Wed, Thu: 13:00–17:00 / Fri: 12:00–16:00

Workshop is led by: FUTURAMA LAB

Team: Kilian Jörg, Rainer Prohaska, Dietmar Tollerian (Radbande)