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From the most popular series of the moment, through film, literature and even advertising, our culture is saturated with images of futures. We find many of them fascinating, although most of them are just current versions of ideas that are more than a century old. Each era has had its own particular vision of the future conditioned, to a large extent, by the context that has nurtured it. The exhibition ‘The Great Imagination. Histories of the Future’ – curated by Jorge Camacho, an expert in futures studies – proposes a reflection on what tomorrow holds. The aim is to understand how and why the future was thought of in the past, to find out how these ideas continue to condition us when it comes to imagining it and to rethink how we can venture new horizons from the present moment.

Have we always imagined, as we do now, radically different futures? How has our idea of the future changed at different historical moments? What impact have these ideas had on the evolution of our societies? How do these images emerge and develop, and what role do imagination and creativity play in the production of possible futures? To explore some answers to all these questions, the exhibition suggests a journey through a universe of fictions and daydreams that at different moments in history have evoked what a future time could be like through literature, film, comics, design and architecture, among other disciplines. The exhibition thus presents projects ranging from the earliest utopias to the most current speculations, including the imaginary that spread from the Industrial Revolution onwards and from which we continue to imbibe to a large extent.

Weaving a dialogue between imaginaries from the 18th century to the present day, the show explores the extent to which our current vision of the future remains anchored in ideas and values of the past, and what role imagination and creativity can play in the production of possible alternatives. In a century beset by multiple crises whose outcome may be crucial for the history of our planet, is it still valid to speculate about idealised futures such as those imagined in the past? What alternative futures can we imagine in response to the challenges we are facing? Unleashing the transformative power of the imagination to think “radically different” worlds is perhaps more necessary now than ever.

‘The Great Imagination. Histories of the Future’ can be visited free of charge on the 4th floor of Espacio Fundación Telefónica, from 3 November 2021 until 17 April 2022. Booking is essential.