Adriana Chiruta
Alternative
Futures
LAB
№ 2
maybe we all have a future
work in progress in Berlin FRESH A.I.R. Residency, Stiftung Berliner Leben, Urban Nation
February-November 2026
based on the question:
How to Stop Wars instead of Starting Them?
Overture
What began in Carambach
in the spring of 2021
will continue 5 years later
in Berlin through
the following movements/experiments:
first movement/experiment:
education
PEACE SPACES FOR KIDS
5 Performative Solutions for Social Change
The Game of Happiness Reminders for Schools
workshops, game, video works, webpage
second movement/experiment:
polyphonic architecture/urbanism
What`s Next? ON LIVING SPACE a Workshop Book for Architects
How NOT to Plant a Baobab in Greenland
workshops, ebook, boardgame, artist & architects talks
third movement/experiment:
work.leadership
WORK FUTURES BEYOND DYSTOPIA
5 Steps to Move like a Leader even in Times of Crisis
The Game of Happiness Reminders at Work
workshops, game and performative installation redefining work beyond the mechanics of obedience
fourth movement/experiment:
social dreaming cabinet
collecting dreams, dreams` scores workshops, audio interventions in public spaces, video works
performance with the dreams` sequences from Charlotte Berardt
The Third Reich of Dreams. The Nightmares of a Nation
Closure:
LOVE LAB BERLIN
THE KISS. LOVE AS POLITICAL POWER. A GAME
workshops, game/love ritual, video/audio interventions in public spaces
If Carl Gustave Jung, Stanley Milgram, Hannah Arendt, Karl Popper and other contemporaries of last century`s wars and totalitarian regimes would ask us if we used the last more than half century to
avoid any turning back to undemocratic nightmares,
what shall we answer?
Are freedom, respect for human rights, social justice, democracy, just empty words used in false sentences? Or do we perform, practice them collectively, in our daily life? Did we
learn from kindergarten the equal rights mental infrastructure and choreographies?
Did we learn it well enough not to miss the steps and fall down again?
Do our cities train us more for togetherness than for separateness
and heartbreaking inequalities?
Did we encourage in our schools logical problem solving approaches and imagination instead of growing and nurturing unquestioning conformity reflexes? Did we train enough our multiple viewpoints thinking and our empathic mirror neurons in order to understand, and even to love, other possibilities and forms of living? To understand and even to
love the spectacular polyphonies of the world?
No, we didn`t. Not enough.
As peace cannot become a social, neither a political reflex, merely by looking at works of art and by applauding the talent of artists, this project will develop
a concept of contemporary art as game/play in which
the spectators` performance is the main part of the artwork.
Seeing future as a game—a game built alongside the training needed to play it well, this
alternative futures playground
proposal is about how can art become a social routine, bringing more empathy, lateral thinking and togetherness – harmonizing the architecture of human relations. In our world of multiple crises, where all the conflicts and wars show us more and more obviously that the quality of our relations, or the lack of it, extends or shortens our life on earth, good relationships, with nature included, may indicate, in fact, if we have any future at all.
Combining my background in performing and visual arts, political philosophy and cognitive sciences, in a radical change of the political paradigm of art by
encouraging the public to occupy, personally, socially and politically the stage,
instead of just applauding others,
this project is about handing the pleasure of agency back to the audience, encouraging them to perform, to act, to move beyond mere visuality and spectatorship — subversive acts in a world more and more tempted by authoritarianism. Besides having a mycelium structure, ideally extending and freeing itself into public spaces with some outdoor works and happenings, this alternative futures laboratory challenges the prescriptive frames in which we are used to consume art, putting together in it from schools to architects/urbanists groups and academia milieu. This extension in unexpected forms toward unexpected spaces will a be kind reminder that far from being a mere decoration with humans and objects, art is a survival practice, skill and tool in times of crisis. Lack of sustenance for art is not just an act of political neglect and ignorance, but an act of collective suicide.
This project is also an artistic action of solidarity with a huge chorus of 15 364 scientists from 184 countries who signed, in 2017, “Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice”.
This document came as a continuation of the first notice “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity”, penned in 1992 by the Union of Concerned Scientists with more than 1700 independent scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates of that time. These two moments probably marked the largest gatherings of brainpower ever to happen on the face of Earth. Both cautioned that: “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.” "Stewardship of the Earth" is used in the sense of taking care of, of caring for, of doing the necessary things for someone who needs help or protection, of treating something in such a way that it stays in good condition. In one word of loving. The largest gathering of brainpower ever to happen on the face of Earth reached this simple conclusion: that the distance between humanity and its vast misery can be accurately measured by our capacity of loving. As simple and as elegant as that! The question how to stop wars instead of starting them invites reflection, transformation, and action, trying to ensure that artists and scientists will have not just a place in the future, but a relevant place in shaping a more tolerable future.
Togetherness games and practiced imagination are here the matched keys for playing in scenarios of collective dreams instead of one of collective nightmare.
1st PEACE SPACES FOR KIDS:
I asked some years ago Milena Dragićević Šešic, head of the UNESCO Chair on Interculturalism, Art Management and Mediation, isn`t it true that if some playful trainings in empathy, logic and democracy, based on practices from art, would be introduced in all the kindergartens and schools, let`s say from next year, 20 years from now the world would be less affected by the avoidable sufferings of conflicts, social injustice, risk of authoritarian regimes or even wars? She said yes, of course, if a political will would let that happen on a larger scale. This first step in my proposal is heading toward the educational milieu, kindergartens included, offering a simple routine composed of 5 exercises from improvisation and theater laboratories, that may bring social change through opening more peace spaces. Previously as a workshop called 5 performative solutions for social change I`ve held for Goethe Institute Bucharest as a result of a performative research I conducted. This was an artistic response to 5 recent scientific experiments. The results of PEACE SPACE for kids will be some workshops I will hold for educators and pupils and a video installation that can function in art spaces but that can also be distributed in schools around the world.
2nd How NOT to Plant a Baobab in Greenland
Because our cities are huge fitness apparatuses for social and political regimes we live in, this will be a boardgame and performative installation redefining the minimum vital of modernists and designed for the usage of architects & urbanists as a tool for mapping more profoundly their clients’ requirements and genuine needs, in order to propose spaces that are not useless or, even worse, detested by their inhabitants, but rather help them harmonize themselves with the humans and nature around. In a form not yet developed for architects/urbanists, How NOT to Plant a Baobab in Greenland was first presented in Now the impulse is to live! curated by Raluca Voinea and Adelina Luft @ CCA Topocentrala, Sofia, 2022 as a board game for post-apocalyptic relationships. In that form it was meant for those who intend to live and work together, from couples to partners, from organizations to communities.
3rd Non-dystopian work futures
If, like some feminists said, even the personal is political, work is definitely, always political! Thus, designing the settings and conditions for the future of the work and of sustainable creative leadership goes hand in hand with designing the geometries of power of the future political systems. Milgram`s obedience experiment had horrible results even in democratic societies. This will be a performative installation redefining work beyond obedience. Last year in a short visit in Berlin I started a workshop format called 5 steps to dance as a leader even in times of crisis, stating that more than ever, humanity needs intelligent and warm-hearted guides toward a more desirable future.
4th Fitness for Dreamers
One of my main projects of cognitive choreographies is Fitness for Dreamers. It is a survival training, a way of reveling, with the help of dreams, scores for change readiness in crisis situations. The social reality is performative. Social phenomenon appear because we affirm them and we organize ourselves to act in the direction of their apparition. They are not like mountains, tornadoes, volcanos, rainbows, oceans, that exist independently of our words, deeds, desires. Social phenomenon are more similar to collective dreams, or, sometimes nightmares. The latest researches in sleep and dream neuroscience showed that dreams are essential tools for our problem-solving abilities. Dreams are complex laboratories of thoughts and very effective rehearsals for unexpected situations.