Future Arts Festival: Remote Sensing Future Living

The term "remote sensing" originates from archaeology, referring to the technical method of analyzing surface features through aerial imagery to detect underground relics. This cross-temporal perspective mirrors our examination of the relationship between the present and the future—every current practice in social design and architectural renewal will become part of the "cultural strata" studied by future archaeologists. Our future will be a segment of history in the far-reaching timeline of the universe.  
The inaugural Future Art Festival is initiated by curator Zhang Xiaorui, co-curated by Yang Bo, Yu Xiaohan, Xu Shuai, and Pei Xindi, with Lin Zijie serving as academic chair. Adopting a dual participation model of invitation and open call, the festival brings together 31 artists, architects, and designers from around the globe to address the core theme of "future habitation" through interdisciplinary creations. The first edition of the Future Art Festival will take place from April 25 to July 6, 2025, at the Engineering Center of Gengdan Institute, Beijing University of Technology. 

The exhibition unfolds along three narrative dimensions:  1. People and the City: Focusing on the symbiotic relationship between social design and urban renewal, exploring how organic updates can create fluid community spaces.  2. Dwelling and Home: Envisioning future three-dimensional living scenarios from perspectives of biosustainability and inclusivity.  3. Psychological Repository: Addressing the emotional dimensions of spatial transformation, constructing a sensory "storage and analysis unit" for urban residents' emotions.  
The 31 participating artists and collectives hail from seven countries—China, Germany, France, Austria, the United States, Singapore, and the UK—forming a dialogue of diverse cultural perspectives. Their works share three defining characteristics: interdisciplinary experimentation, material culture research, and social-spatial intervention. These qualities perfectly align with the "Remote Sensing the Future" theme, as the artists act as contemporary archaeologists, employing three layers—material mediums(bricks/food/organic materials), technical methods(imaging/biotechnology), and bodily perception (habitation experience/psychological mapping)—to observe and reconstruct "future living" from a distance.  



04.25.2025-07.06.2025
Gengdan Institute, Beijing University of Technology.  
Curator: Zhang Xiaorui
Co-curated by Yang Bo, Yu Xiaohan, Shuai Xu, Pei Xindi
Academic chair: Lin Zijie