utopia – Schoemann

15/01/202613/01/2026

Art Utopia

Not all art is utopia, but a lot of it. A series of talks on the issue of utopia in art (BNF) reminds us on the utopian projects many artists have pursued in the history of art. From a non-believer’s point of view, religious depictions belong to some form of utopian art. Much later art movements proposed to bring art closer to people’s lives by spreading decorative art to objects of the daily lives, like furniture, dresses, jewelry. Different forms of experimentation with materials or art styles reveal a taste for freedom of expression, sometimes of a utopian kind, at least at the time of experimenting. Abstract art opens up thought spaces which may appear like verylong shots into a very distant future. Science-fiction is of course a well known form of dealing with and representing utopian ideas to larger audiences. Maybe it is this curated space of utopia which many people seek when going to exhibitions and galleries. (Image: Giovanni Bellini, Resurrection of Christ, Gemäldegalerie Berlin).

01/01/202631/12/2025

Saint-Simon Utopia

Towards the end of the 18th century and during the early 19th century, the early signs of what the industrial revolution would mean for the working people became visible. Saint-Simon had lived through the ups and downs of the French revolution himself and had been to the Americas with La Fayette before he developed his utopian socialist vision of a unified class of working people, which for him included blue as well as white collar workers. At the advent of the 2nd industrial revolution through general and agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 2025, we shall most likely witness a renewed interest in utopian scenarios and grand ideas of what the future of technology, society and humanity might be like. In 2026 we shall re-read Saint-Simon quite a bit in order to learn about ways to make sense of arising trends and how to come up with a positive utopia that can motivate people to thrive again for more equality within and between societies.

31/12/202530/12/2025

Q Q Utopia

Projections into the future, the painting of a futuristic image or an utopian narrative can be based on a quantitative or a qualitative approach. A quantitative projection into the year 2100, for example, is form of creating an utopian vision of quantitative developments. Projecting the small reduction of working hours into a very distant future will eventually approach zero hours (tous sublime). Alternatively, utopian scenarios for qualitative characteristics of work and employment range from full health and safety or “cure yourself by work” (?really, “Arbeit macht frei”) to AI and robots designed to solve major laborious tasks and challenges for us. It is important to differentiate between the qualitative and quantitative forms of utopian visions. The time frames matter, too. In politics various combinations of utopian perspectives have frequently been combined. The human mind’s capability to project itself into the future explains our tendency to come up with utopian ideas or scenarios irrespective of our ability for rationality. We better acknowledge these human characteristics rather than insist on an either, or image of ourselves.

30/12/202529/12/2025

Positive negative Utopia

We have been used to distinguish between a positive or a negative utopia. The idea of a paradise is usually associated with a positive utopia, however, from the perspective of mankind being unable to live together without the idea of God being the ultimate arbitrator, this is more like a negative utopia. The industrial revolution and communism as the utopia to spread wealth equally across generations and all people, have been turned into negative utopia by dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. The fascist ideas of superiority of a race has also turned into negative horror and Nazi-terror. Hence, skepticism is in order, if either form of utopia is advocated. There are numerous examples of unintended or not explicitly stated consequences that have to be considered as well. (Image: Extract from Salvador Dali, Looming Danger Alarm, 1934, Neue Nationalgalerie, Stiftung Pietzsch)