Future festival Beyond takes place online for the first time

What kind of future do we want to live in? How will climate change and new technologies change our lives? At the Karlsruhe Beyond Festival this year, such questions will also be discussed online at the intersection of science, technology and art.

Even during the lockdown, there was no question of canceling the Karlsruhe Beyond Festival. That’s why the specialist symposium on climate change and the film festival will take place online for the first time from July 23 to 26. “We have been developing ideas and concepts for the future for years. We have also found an answer to this crisis,” says festival organizer Luder Pfanz from the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.

All presentations at the three-day symposium “Future Design” and some contributions to the four-day film festival “Climate Change” will be broadcast live on the Internet. The relevant links can be found on the festival website www.beyond-festival.com. The lectures and panels will be broadcast free of charge. You can support the festival financially by purchasing an online pass.

Content bracket is the fight against climate change

At the symposium from July 23 to 25 from 9.30 am to 12 noon and from 1.30 pm to 4.30 pm, future topics such as the sustainable use of artificial intelligence or the Green New Deals will be on the agenda in six blocks. At the film festival, the 50 or so competition entries will be broadcast live online from July 23 to 25 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. and on July 26 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The main theme of the film festival is the fight against exploitation and climate change.

As before, the command center of the virtual festival is located in a studio at the Center for Art and Media I ZKM Karlsruhe. Presentations and talks will be broadcast from there all over the world. However, no guests are allowed there.

Crisis as an opportunity for reorientation

“Because there is a 16-hour time difference between the US West Coast and East Asia, organizing the schedule was a real challenge,” says Pfanz. Nevertheless, he also sees the crisis as an opportunity to realign the festival. “The fact that we are developing strategies for environmental protection and flying people from all over the world to Karlsruhe for a few days has been a paradoxical situation all these years,” says Pfanz.

For this reason, the Beyond Festival will be designed as a hybrid of streamed lectures and a face-to-face event after the end of the coronavirus crisis. Foreign experts can then be connected for individual lectures via a climate-neutral livestream. In addition, digital channels under the Beyond brand will be used throughout the year to provide impetus for shaping a sustainable future.

However, there will not be a permanent shift to the internet. “You can’t completely replace direct personal contact with digital concepts,” says Pfanz. After all, a lot of creativity is uncovered every time numerous experts come together.

Silicon Valley or surveillance: the search for a social narrative

For Pfanz, one of the biggest future challenges and a key topic of the symposium is the drafting of a narrative on the social changes brought about by digitalization and artificial intelligence. According to Pfanz, there are currently two extreme visions. One is based on the lifestyle of the rich Americans of Silicon Valley. According to this vision, only a few wealthy people would benefit from artificial intelligence. While the new technology takes the work off the hands of people in a few digital islands, the rest of the world has to get by as before.

The other vision is based on the approach of the Chinese state. All citizens of a country can benefit equally from digitalization and artificial intelligence, but must accept state control and the loss of civil liberties in return. “Neither narrative is acceptable,” says Pfanz. That’s why we need to think about the use of artificial intelligence by society at an early stage.