Art’s Intratemporal Relation to the Future

The world of art has always been occupied with art’s temporal relations to the future. In the current artistic landscape, we see a wealth of exhibition themes and titles concerned with ‘the future’ in responses to the dominant narratives of a contemporary technological world driven by algorithmic systems and prediction models. This momentous future-orientation is my cue to rethink art’s relation to the future, by zooming in on its temporal modes of existence. With a take-off in the notion of art as “time-based,” as conceptually based in the time, duration, and/or the function of a medium and the experience it mediates, I propose a different intratemporal mode of existence for art. This concerns how art co-exists with, evolves through, and co-produces temporal relations in between humans and technology. This proposal of an intratemporal perspective on art might contribute to further investigations into art epistemologies in which art becomes a part of larger narratives in which human beings and communities co-evolve—and have always co-evolved—with technics. It might offer inroads to study art on its new paths of exploration in collaboration with science and technology and when art is occupied with the very making of the future through participation in innovation projects.