Future Focus: Fragile Worlds was a two-part event that took place as part of Ars Electronica 2020 In Kepler’s Gardens, a global journey mapping the “new” world. We joined a community of organisations from North to South forming a UK Garden as part of this year’s Ars Electronica 2020 festival, the Garden of Earthly Delights (after the homonymous Hieronymous Bosch painting).
Inspired by the Ars Electronica 2020 meta-topics of ecology, democracy, uncertainty, humanity, reality, and autonomy, and ideas behind the Bosch painting, the UK Garden of Earthly Delights interrogates the moment we are now in, as humanity is in the middle of a long term pandemic, global recession and mass unemployment, but also in an ongoing environmental crisis, inequality and the spread of division and fascism.
Fragile Worlds brought together STARTS Prize winners, associate artists, as well as partners and collaborators to present an online two-part programme of art practices tours and conversations. The presentations and discussions that followed explored ideas of present and future ecologies and systems, from environmental change and sustainability to technologically driven worlds, but also their possible restoration and rewilding.