The Futurism of Industrial Cities – 100 Years of Wolfsburg/Nowa Huta

The planned cities of Wolfsburg in Germany and Nowa Huta near Kraków in Poland are among the very few newly founded cities of the 20th century in Europe. In both cities, social, economic, and urbanistic ideologies were rudimentarily implemented – which, however, reflected widely diverging ideas of modern urban life in an industrial society and in which the respective national history unmistakably manifested itself. Since Wolfsburg as well as Nowa Huta were designed as workers’ settlements, they are particularly affected by the current transformation of industrial society, a transformation that will radically change both cities, albeit in very different ways.

In 2038 and 2049, Wolfsburg and Nowa Huta will respectively be one hundred years old. The project anticipates the anniversaries in imaginative and speculative ways and uses the years 2038 and 2049 as a framework for looking back from a future viewpoint into the then centenarian past. Tendencies in the development of labour, mobility, ecology, and society can be discussed exemplarily by means of an imagined anticipation of the future of Wolfsburg and Nowa Huta.

As part of “The Futurism of Industrial Cities – 100 Years of Wolfsburg/Nowa Huta”, German and Polish artists discuss visions of future working worlds and forms of society with experts from both countries and residents of both cities and develop artistic works about such visions. The joint work and the insights gained from it deepen mutual understanding. They can moreover generate ideas, for instance concerning the concept of labour, that are of more than local, national, or binational significance.

A catalogue presenting the works of the 14 participating artists and texts written by 15 authors will be released in November 2006.