A fictional documentary as news from the future. The audiovisual message in a bottle, recorded in the year 2038, tells us like an instruction manual that in a quarter of a century we will have mastered the great crises of the planet. It wasn't easy and it was close, but we did it.

Can we or do we want to afford to be optimistic about the future, say by setting the time marker 2038? It depends from which direction you look. Do you look there or back from there: to the past present of the twenties. This decade will probably never be called golden, it will rather be regarded as the disastrous time very close to the apocalypse. But since the makers/artists/curators of 2038_HERE IS HOW do not believe in life after death (or after the downfall), the downfall will have been stopped.
In 2038, that is today - because with this film we have checked into the future - we live in the age of the "New Serenity" and will ask ourselves in retrospect how we actually succeeded in warding off the present to the rest of time.
2038_HERE IS HOW brings together and bundles the short audiovisual works from the German Pavilion at the 2021 Architecture Biennale, which can be accessed via QR code, into an overall cinematic narrative: the future present will be "far from paradise" and at the same time incomprehensibly better than it was a quarter of a century ago, that is again today.
On the way there, the question was on the one hand how we want to live together, but also how we can succeed at all. For answers, only multi-perspective and multi-disciplinary strategies are purposeful in order to work on the network of interconnections. The film is a lesson in complexity research with participation from the fields of biology and medicine, anthropology and geography, sociology and climate research, economics and art, Big Data and architecture. It is also a manifesto against extractionism, centralism and capitalism for a radically decentralised and non-profit infrastructure.
It may seem strange only at first (and superficial) glance that this utopian project was developed under the umbrella and in the context of an architecture biennial. But the mastermind of the show, Hashim Sarkis, currently dean of the architecture faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that it is highly limited to measure architecture only by its historical and contemporary appearance. Cobbler stick to your last? No, or rather the opposite: for just as architecture is not only about building, so it is not justifiable for countries to think only within their national borders when it comes to living with the self-made climate catastrophe.
The fictional optimism of this film - we will have made it - is not beholden to any daisy-like or esoteric utopia, but gives a stage to projects and people, concepts and works that already exist - from Lagos to Alaska; from Taiwanese digital minister Audrey Tang to quantum mechanics and Spaceship Earth theory; from visionary philosopher and designer Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) to cyberneticist Stafford Beer (1926-2002); from learning theorist Omoju Miller with her "new vision for the global brain" to biotechnologist Mitchell Joachim's "multi species architecture".
What it is ultimately about, if we want to arrive in 2038 at all today: overcoming the division of society into rich and poor, the end of private land ownership, the disempowerment of the big tech monopolies and the fundamental realisation of being part of a system instead of Pavlovian egoshooters. Could it be a little smaller? Unfortunately not. Because we have to decide whether humanity wants to be part of the planet's problem or part of the solution.

Ralph Eue (05.10.2022)

Reviews and Commentary:

"All these are not utopian reveries, but questions of direction that need to be clarified now and that will determine the appearance and functioning of future cities, ecosystems and societies. One day the work could become historic; either as an anticipation of a new political optimism - or as a reminder of the moment when the right decisions could still have been made." (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 20.05.2021)

„The projects of this biennial pose the question of world justice. Not only for humanity in all its diversity, but also for the other living beings on this planet. The films at the German Pavilion either run via a QR code on your smartphone while you wander through a deconstructed, gleaming white pavilion, or anywhere else in the world on your computer. It's cleverly thought out, and above all the films and their real experts offer solutions on how to reconcile economy and ecology or how to find alternative forms of private property.“ (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 21.05.2021)

Production Year

2021

Duration

Feature-Length Film (61+ Min.)

Type

Docufiction / Mockumentary, Animated Film

Topic

Visual Arts / Design / Photography, Architecture / Urban Space, Social Engagement, Digitalisation / Internet, Environment / Ecology / Climate Change

Scope of Rights

Nichtexklusive nichtkommerzielle öffentliche Aufführung (nonexclusive, noncommercial public screening),Keine TV-Rechte (no TV rights),Nichtexklusive, nichtkommerzielle Video-on-Demand Nutzung (nonexclusive, noncommercial VOD rights)

Licence Period

31.01.2028

Permanently Restricted Areas

Germany (DE), Austria (AT), Switzerland (CH), Liechtenstein (LI), Alto Adige

Available Media

DCP, Blu-ray Disc

Original Version

English (en)

DCP

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Arabic (ar), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Italian (it)

Note on the Format

DCP sind verschlüsselt

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Arabic (ar), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Italian (it)