Expedition into the Future

December 31, 1999 - February 6, 2000

Each political system approaches the vision of its future in a unique way.  Not so long ago self-indulgent technocrats, favoring central organization and planning, dreamed of the new millennium as an age of cars without gas, cured cancer and communist manifestos on Mars.  Eager communist officials manufactured their visions following the lead of ideological oracles: the future seemed within reach, dreams were born on the wings of the Sputniks.

These prognoses are also reflected in the naïve elements of the imagination of those children who were raised in such fantasy-worlds: the space ships resembling a coffee-maker, the moving pavement, the homework-writing robot or the astronaut wrapped in aluminum-foil.

The exhibition approaches the vision of the future from two points of view: the writings, drawings, competition-essays of children of the former communist block in the 1960s-70s are presented next to the works of the contemporary professional ideological visionaries.  The similarities are astonishingly interesting as well as spectacular since the visitors can enjoy as well as remember such sights as the funny props and immature scripts of the elementary science-fiction films.  This is again a somewhat nostalgic exhibition, but we hope it is much more than that.