“Audacious minds help us take a glimpse into the future.” These are the words of Freo Majer, Artistic Director of Forecast Festival, as he opened the ninth edition of the event at Radialsystem, Berlin. Majer was introducing the six bold creative voices at the heart of the two-day festival, whose most recent works have evolved from the Forecast mentorship programme. These artists – Camil Navarro, Hao Zhou, Johanna Seelemann, Mei Liu, Trà Nguyễn, Mehdi Dahkan – have been through a process of open submission, shortlisting, presentation and selection, to be paired with established creators whose practices range from photography, filmmaking and design to choreography, installation and performance. This year, the focus is on the idea of “imagined futures”; their works deal with what could be, and what’s yet to come.
The theme is perhaps most evident in Johanna Seelemann’s installation, Soil Assembly. The artist, who is also a product designer and was mentored by Fiona Raby, uses speculative design as a tool to explore solutions to soil degradation. Three adjacent screens project aerial images of rugged landscapes – coastal cliffs, snow-covered flatlands and glacial melts – accompanied by a narration about interdependence and custodianship. A call to shift perspective – from humancentric and biological conceptions of time towards a geological time, in which a hundred years becomes little more than a second – is central. This message is reinforced by an underlying soundscape of the Earth’s vibrations recorded on geophone; it is reminiscent of snow underfoot, falling rain, bubbling lava and cracking glaciers. In the centre of the space, revealed by spotlights, are the products of Seelemann’s speculative design process. Initially, these are mystifying objects, visually comparable to drilling apparatus and other extractive equipment. Over the course of the piece, however, they are revealed to be mineral rich devices designed to remain in the ground – nourishing the soil over multiple generations each time they are activated by acid or alkaline rain.
The fragility of ecological futures, and the importance of creative custodianship, are also central to Camil Navarro’s sound and performance project Ecological Assemblage. It reflects upon water risk issues, and was produced alongside mentor Ute Wassermann, who is a vocalist, composer and sound artist. Ecological Assemblage sees Navarro, an interdisciplinary creator, physically embody the Aconcagua River Basin in the artist’s home country of Chile. It pays homage to the Petorca River, which has dried up as a result of the fruit industry. The performance lasts more than three hours, during which the artist viscerally conveys the struggle of a dry river as well as the echoes of its flow, which can still be heard deep beneath the ground.
Sound and listening are at the heart of Mehdi Dahkan’s performance, KMs of Resistance. The France-based, Moroccan choreographer worked with Alice Ripoll to draw inspiration from Chaabi dance gatherings, which were historically used to transmit coded information during Morocco’s struggle for independence. Two figures use footsteps and breathing to create an accelerating rhythm. At first disjointed, the beats converge until the performers – and the audience – seem to be unified by one shared pulse. In this way, the piece draws upon the past to present a future defined by intuitive communication, unity and resistance.
Artist Mei Liu, who was mentored by photographer Lieko Shiga, also engages with acts of protest. Homesick for Another World is a performance and audiovisual project that interweaves the artist’s personal experience as an escapee from severe Chinese lockdown conditions, with rich testimonies from others who have experienced political violence, oppression and excessive state control. The work bridges physical and metaphysical worlds by utilising lucid dreaming as a mechanism to explore liminal landscapes and meet imagined characters, whilst also giving a voice to displaced and disillusioned freedom fighters. We’re encouraged to question the nature of authority and complicity in authoritarian regimes.
The dreamlike and non-linear quality of Liu’s project is similarly present in Trà Nguyễn’s Mother Doesn’t Know Mnemosyne – a reference to the Greek Goddess of Memory and mother to the nine Muses. This slow and meditative performance, created with guidance from media arist Theo Eshetu, delicately unveils a narrative of personal and familial histories associated with textile labour exports from Vietnam to the USSR. Here, the region’s industrial processes are connected with more universal experiences of motherhood, memory and resilience. A deliberate deceleration of pace provides space to breathe and reflect upon the entanglement between the personal, the societal and the geopolitical, revealing how policy decisions and economic factors continue to shape familial relationships over generations.
Finally, family is the focal point in Hao Zhou’s insightful and intimately personal documentary short, Correct Me If I’m Wrong. Having responded to the call for projects on the theme of ‘A Place Beyond Fear’, the Chinese-born, Ohio-based filmmaker was paired with fellow documentarian Tomer Heymann. Zhou’s film bravely confronts what they were afraid of – acquiescing to their family’s long-held wish to “cure” Zhou’s queerness. We follow the filmmaker as they are subjected to mystical interventions by their mother, grandmother and other female relatives – practices which include everything from chanting, palm reading and food related ceremonies, to shamans, qigong treatments, the burning of voodoo dolls and the plucking of white hairs from the filmmaker’s head. What’s most striking is the tender and nuanced way in which Zhou manages to convey both their family’s problematic desire to “fix” them, and to recognise – with considerable sympathy – that the root of this behaviour is an earnest, well-meaning and deeply felt love. They fear Zhou be unable to achieve happiness and fulfilment in the future without their intervention.
From the personal to the universal, and from the societal to the ecological, Forecast Festival is a platform for rich and varied projects which transcend neatly defined genres. Every year, the event provides an essential space for audiences to experience creativity and innovation first-hand. It’s about the spirit of collaboration and what can be achieved when creative minds come together. The 2025 edition navigated themes of identity, ecology and resistance. It ruminated on both the present moment and futures as yet unwritten, asking: what will the world look like in our lifetime, or in the duration of the Earth? What will it look like even one year from now? The answer: Forecast Festival 10 returns in 2026, so stay tuned.
Forecast Festival 9 ran from 14-15 March at Radialsystem, Berlin.
Words: Megan Hobson
Image Credits:
1. Hao Zhou, from Correct Me If I’m Wrong, (2025).
2. Johanna Seelemann, from Soil Assembly, (2025).
3. Johanna Seelemann, from Soil Assembly, (2025).
4. Mei Liu, from Homesick for Another World, (2024).
5. Johanna Seelemann, from Soil Assembly, (2025).
6. Johanna Seelemann, from Soil Assembly, (2025).
