Futures Digital Festival: The Assembly

During The Assembly, our Futures members organize a series of talks with art professionals in topics related to the main theme RESET. The assemblies take place online every Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 4pm. They are organized via Zoom and streamed on our social media channels.
Below, you can find more details about them:

ASSEMBLY #1 - Launch of the Exhibition RESET with Salvatore Vitale, Garry Loughlin, Dávid Biró, Ana Zibelnik and Julie Poly
Organized by Futures Photography
Oct. 6 (Tuesday), 4pm
The curator Salvatore Vitale invites the artists for a talk about the online exhibition RESET. In partnership with Fotomat, the show investigates our main theme with projects by seven artists from our platform: Julie Poly, Ela Polkowska, Eva O'Leary, Garry Loughlin, Sanne De Wilde, Dávid Biró, and Ana Zibelnik.
Register online here

ASSEMBLY #2 - On Adaptation and Production (with Lewis Bush and Aisling Murray)
Organized by PhotoIreland Festival
Oct. 8 (Thursday), 4pm
In his article ‘What protective measures can you think of so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model?’ (published in Versopolis on 24th April, 2020), Bruno Latour proposes 6 key questions that are useful for individuals, artists, cultural producers, and institutions to ask of themselves. PhotoIreland invites Lewis Bush (artist, educator) and Aisling Murray (Exhibitions Manager, Science Gallery Dublin) to take inspiration from these questions in order to review our shared inventory of our positions as we emerge into a post-pandemic world. What can we learn from the pandemic? What can we dispose of? What can we gain? How can we evolve so our work and our institutions don’t become obsolete? Should we interrupt our current modes of production?
Register online here

ASSEMBLY #3 - Reset Modernity: talk with Sylvain Gouraud
Organized by Hyères Festival
Oct. 10 (Saturday), 4pm
In this talk, Hyères Festival digs into the exhibition and book 'Reset Modernity', by Bruno Latour, to understand the challenges of today. In order to do that, they invited the artist Sylvain Gouraud to talk about his participation in the exhibition and about his work.
Register online here

ASSEMBLY #4 - Talk with Igiaba Scego and Nicola Lo Calzo
Organized by CAMERA
Oct. 13 (Tuesday), 4pm
Starting from their related research and experiences, the writer Igiaba Scego (Rome, 1974) and the artist Nicola Lo Calzo (Turin, 1976) will discuss crucial topics like decolonization, representation and power in the contemporary cultural scenario. Commonly grounded in the fields of post-colonial and critical studies, their researches appear as textual and visual attempts of re-reading the African diaspora, not only in the historical colonial contexts but also from the perspective of its heritage in the Western countries and cultures. Based in Rome, Scego is an Italian writer, journalist, and activist of Somalian origin who published books and international articles related to the above mentioned topics mixed with autobiographical dynamics. Nicola Lo Calzo is an Italian photographer based in Paris. He is developing Cham, a long period visual research about the colonial slavery and its consequences in ordinary life.
Register online here

ASSEMBLY #5 - Talk with Tanya Kapitonova, Rafal Milach and Yulia Krivich
Organized by The Calvert Journal
Oct. 15 (Thursday), 4pm
Responding to the festival's theme of RESET, Liza Premiyak, Managing Editor of The Calvert Journal, will moderate a conversation with the photographers Tanya Kapitonova (Belarus), Rafal Milach (Poland) and Yulia Krivich (Ukraine) — whose past projects have tackled protest imagery and activism in their respective homes. With the rise of so-called “performative activism”, we believe this will be a timely debate that will encourage artists to think beyond what we know protest imagery to be.
Register online here

ASSEMBLY #6 - Survival Artists! How artists are dealing with Coronavirus
Organized by Triennial of Photography Hamburg
Oct. 17 (Saturday), 4pm
What motivates this year's Futures Talents Manuela Braunmüller, Lukas Kreibig, Maximilian Mann, Sina Niemeyer and Arne Piepke at the moment? What is behind their committed photographic concepts? The five photographers take us into their world with their presentations and together we discuss how Corona affects their artistic projects. They take us with them on their photographic journeys, which they will hopefully be able to undertake in real time in the near future. This talk is oderated by Stephanie Bunk (freelance curator for photography, lecturer and author) and Anja Kneller (photo editor and coach for photographers).
Register online here

ASSEMBLY #7 - Resistances in solidarity: Talk with Pía Ogea, Sandra Maunac and Nicolás Combarro
Organized by PhotoEspaña
Oct. 20 (Tuesday), 4pm
A triple perspective focusing on how the different image agents are facing this new situation caused by COVID-19. Pía, Nicolás and Sandra will offer a hopeful dissertation about the need to establish new strategies and new solidarities from a triple dimension: artistic practice, community (museums, curators...) and government support. In this context, we would like to highlight the importance of alliances and particularly the need of more platforms and joint work.
Register online here

ASSEMBLY #8 - RESET your mindset and adapt in the world of photography
Organized by Photo Romania Festival
Oct. 22 (Thursday), 4pm
Join us for a challenging talk with the photojournalist and Photon Festival director, Tania Castro, about the skills and competencies needed by photographers in the current worldwide situation. The talk will be moderated by Sebastian Vaida, who is the artistic director of Photo Romania Festival, and also a photographer and psychologist. The result will be a change in your mindset, so that you can adapt easier to the ever-changing world of photography.
Register online here

ASSEMBLY #9 - Resetting The Cow – Artists reflecting on mankind tailoring nature to its own needs
Organized by Capa Center
Oct. 24 (Saturday), 5pm
Online round table discussion accompanied by a slideshow showcasing the work of three contemporary artists dealing with the topic of intensive animal farming, cattle breeding in particular. The three authors are using cow as a metaphor to people’s desire for domination of natural phenomena which often result in weird situations and unnatural processes within industrial livestock production. Two emerging artists from the younger generation, Hungarian artist Dániel Szalai (Futures talent of the Capa Center) and German photographer Manuela Barunmüller (Futures talent of the Triennial of Photography Hamburg) will be joined by renowned Dutch photographer Hans van der Meer, who also published a book titled Time to Change on this topic. The conversation is mediated by the curator István Virágvölgyi.
Register online here

ASSEMBLY #10 - Resetting photography: Can Photography be a tool of changes? Workshop by Karolina Gembara (Sputnik Photos)
Organized by Fotofestiwal Lodz
Oct. 27 (Tuesday), 4pm
Photography is many things. In my lecture I propose to reset our thinking and consider its very basic quality - its toolness. What does it do? What do I do with it? How can I utilise it? Can I make any change using my camera? Can this change be good? Going over several examples of the so-called activist photography, engaged projects, participatory programmes and her own practise, Karolina Gembara would like to discuss how the medium we use could become an extension of democratic and inclusive processes. She will also try to reflect on the anthropological burdens and privilege traps photographers should pay attention to while working with ‘sensitive’ topics. During the meeting, we will have an opportunity to bounce off some ideas and questions with an invited guest - an expert working with excluded communities.
*This event has a longer duration of around 2 hours
Register online here

ASSEMBLY #11 - Sandrine Colard in conversation with Léonard Pongo
Organized by FOMU
Oct. 29 (Thursday), 4pm
Within Africa and its worldwide diasporas, the photographic medium has a long history of violence and abuse. Images of slavery, lynching, ethnographic “curiosities,” colonialism, apartheid and land exploitations, have contributed to subjugate the pictured subject, but also, to awaken viewers to the represented injustices. 2020 has symbolized the epitome of that power of indignation, with the video of George Floyd’s murder igniting a worldwide outrage demanding racial justice. Yet, the place of beauty in photographs of black lives, their homes and environments, have less readily been perceived and circulated as a legitimate and powerful means of resistance, or has sometimes been suspected of aestheticizing tragedy or suffering. This roundtable invites an artist who make a resolute use of beauty in his practice as an amendment for the underrepresentation in black everydayness, milieu, or history.
Register online here