The artist collective Fourdummies is collecting and safeguarding visions of the future together with residents and festival visitors in Graz, Leoben and Vordernberg. These visions will be turned into a joint visual prophecy in the Double Moment experiment, to await the moment of rediscovery in a time capsule buried in the ground for twenty years.
German language
The Fourdummies collective poses the big questions of the future: what remains, what comes, and what disappears? To examine these questions, the group will be travelling to Graz, Leoben and Vordernberg in the herbst vehicle, in search of residents’ and festival visitors’ visions of the future. They invite, inquire and engage in conversation. Personal stories and local politics lead to visions of social change. Images and scenarios feed on fears of the future and wishful notions, flashing up and manifesting themselves in a joint visual prophecy that confronts vague assumptions with something substantial. But the collective doesn’t leave it at that: as a result of the Double Moment experiment developed by the Fourdummies, the present (2015) and the future (2035) touch for a time-leap. The photolab for things to come thus not only predicts, but joins visitors to pre-determine a scenario of the future. Imagination and fiction coincide in the moment of creating the image. The resulting photo-future montage, to be buried in a specially designed time capsule in Leoben and Vordernberg during a ceremonial procession, carries a promise: in twenty years’ time, in 2035, the image visionaries will return with spades and shovels to dig up the time capsule and see how close they came to the future. Back to the Future or Forward to the Past! Do you remember the future?
Idea and concept Waltraud Brauner & Georg Klüver-Pfandtner
By and with Wilhelm Binder, Waltraud Brauner, Georg Klüver-Pfandtner, Johanna Moder, Sissi Noé & Christoph Szalay
Artistic collaboration Lisa Schwalb
Photo montage Stefan Beer
Commissioned by steirischer herbst
steirischer herbst
Dramaturgy Flori Gugger & Petra Pölzl
Project management Jakob Schweighofer
Fourdummies (AT)
In 2013, Waltraud Brauner, Peter Baur and Georg Klüver-Pfandtner formed the fictitious collective Fourdummies. Based on the made-up 20-year collaboration of the group, the three members create formats located between fact and fiction and including both performative and interactive elements. Fourdummies has presented this mix of static and active art at venues including Vienna’s brut (“Image Recovery”, 2014 and “Das Verflixte 8. Jahr”, 2015). Within the context of steirischer herbst, the collective will also be appearing in Styria, with a blend of the present day and the future in keeping with this year’s leitmotif.