Open the History of the Future

The collection exhibition »Writing the History of the Future« takes up the major themes that the ZKM has dealt with over the past 30 years: artistic and social change against the background of digitisation. We are taking the opening of Part I of our collection as an opportunity to celebrate our 30th anniversary with you on a »ZKM Day«.

Part I of the collection provides an insight into the early history of participation and digitisation, which was not only applied to electronic art, but also to experimental literature and the visual arts of traditional media. From the moving letter to the moving viewer, from kinetics and Op-Art to early computer art from the 1950s onwards – we show the development of the mobilization of art. New references allow us to understand the larger lines of development and the emergence of the latest developments in the field of digital technologies.

The view from the collection exhibition to the ground floor makes it possible to combine this historical perspective with the current education policy experiment »Open Codes«. Visitors can draw a line between the current »world as a data field« and the history of electronic and digital art, as well as between exhibition and collection practice, which have been following common lines for 30 years.