Since 2016 Fatma Nur Özogul and Violeta Ivanova are working on a multi-layered art project dedicated to future prediction methods. In seeking of curious answers, the artists are recreating the folklore and unconventional methods in another contexts; furthermore, observing and naming as well the processes changing the society and its behaviors.

Predictions have often been made, from antiquity until the present, by using paranormal or supernatural means and since thousands of years the humanity has developed a huge number of formulas in order to see forwards.
We live in a changing world. Social, economic and political change is going on all around. Accurate prediction and careful planning would therefore appear to be more necessary than ever.

Prediction and planning are not, moreover, neutral processes but ideological ones. Prediction is rarely done for its own sake, it is almost always prediction undertaken for some specific reason. How we predict, why we predict, who the predictors are, and what we expect of them- all depend on the kind of society we live in.

‘Scientists believe that the universe is governed by well-defined laws that in principle allow one to predict the future. But the motion given by that laws is often chaotic. This means that a tiny change in the in the initial situation can lead to change in the subsequent behaviour that rapidly grows large’*.

That is why not only in mathematics and physics, but in philosophy, sociology, culturology and other social sciences one can see a lot of theories; which develop strategy of future of the human civilization through matching or contrasting past and future.

In contrast to the contemporary methods of prediction we have listed above, we suggest an unconventional forecasting, pure mysticism and divination. In its roots our methods have the same lines as the contemporary forecasts: collecting and analyse of data using patterns and algorithms. What makes them unique is their focus on the community, without minimalizing the person and his/her life to a column of numbers.

* by Leo Howe and Stephen Hawking

The topic prediction and fortune telling is very broad and multi-layered one. It’s meant as a tool for observation and studying the society; which tells a lot about its needs and hopes. Beginning with ‘Collective future’, where we ask a professional fortune teller about the future of a certain community and ‘Hard to say’ where we deal with the imperfection of the foretelling process; now we are chasing love in ‘Daisy’(work in progress).

With the serial, we are recreating unconventional methods in another context. In a certain sense it’s a look on general positions- the seeker, the problem, the interpreter and the solution. Along with producing new works on the topic, we plan to make a website to collect and process the outcomes of the participative performances and develop a system to compare the results (and compare the them with reality). By this reason “Collective future” is on-going long-term project.

The real skill of any kind of fortune telling lay in the interpretation…