Alpine Futures Literacy

«Everything that lies ahead is bitten in the tail by the past», Nietzsche remarked in response to the question of whether the future can be meaningfully envisioned without reference to the past. But how can future perspectives and scenarios emerge that, due to their historical contingency, remain sufficiently open to the new – and open up horizons of imagination that extend beyond the boundaries of familiar viewpoints, habits, and the expectations, fears, and hopes they engender?

These questions are addressed in the Alpine Futures Literacy research area. To this end, approaches from the humanities, cultural and social sciences are brought together in an interdisciplinary framework and networked through transdisciplinary interfaces with non-academic practice and its various representatives in society, art and culture, business, and politics.

The goal is to collaboratively develop a «literacy» that enables us to recognize, describe, and implement the potential for shaping the future within the context of historical and contemporary awareness. The aim is to identify contingencies in established habits of perception and interpretation and to explore alternative ways of seeing and thinking – while harnessing historical experiences as a resonant space for the imagination and shaping of the future, guided by the motto: The future needs origins – origins need the future.