ykon.org

For Device #4 YKON asked exhibition visitors to take an empty flag and write down their immediate change to our world as they envisioned it. It didn’t matter if it was utopian, dystopian, purely fantastic or extremely practical. Then they had to pick a corresponding object or two and attach the flag to it and place it somewhere accordingly onto the YKON Map. This booklet shows the collective accumulation of suggestions for our future that were fabricated during 37 Manifestos 2011 in Berlin.

YKON is a non-for-profit advocacy group for unrepresented nations, experimental countries & utopian thinkers. YKON’s key interest is the production & dissemination of knowledge about these fragile entities by means of co-operation & collaboration between the arts & ALL other fields of study. YKON engineers facilitation devices and communication formats to instigate collaborative exchange, research and development.

During 37 Manifestos in Berlin.
Check out our pics!

Earlier this July YKON participated in “37 MANIFESTOS – How to become a collective in four easy lessons”
We played the YKON Game on the opening weekend and for the first time we displayed the game within an exhibition format.
We installed four stations to test individual participation..

“10. bis 21. Juli 2011, Eröffnung 9. Juli 2011
Forum Factory, Besselstraße 13-14, Berlin

1 have an idea
2 invite others – share
3 form, storm, norm and perform
4 document – write a manifesto”

We just played it again and for the first time in Berlin. It was visionary!
During DMY Berlin YKON had the opportunity to present and further develop the YKON GAME.

Let us quickly and briefly re-introduce this provocative and highly entertaining research tool and also share with you the next opportunity to partake and take over:

The YKON GAME is a beautifully bizarre journey and collective attempt to alter the world. Instead of solving the common problems that we are facing. The YKON GAME seeks to uncover the ideas that we haven’t payed attention to yet – ideas that are sometimes wonderful and sometimes terrifying. Other thoughts that could forever alter the world and the way we live in it.

The YKON GAME is based on a simple thought experiment: Imagine that the world is brought to a complete halt. Everything stops. No more business as usual. Everyone has to consider a new way for things to be. With the world being frozen, you and your fellow players can tinker with the world as you please. What will you change? How do you convince others to go along with your changes? And what about the consequences?

Through the 1960’s architect & utopian thinker, Buckminster Fuller developed the “World Game”. It was his master plan for our planet Earth. A tool that would formulate a comprehensive design and science approach to all the problems of the world. Inspired by Fuller’s vision we have taken its core ideas and developed a contemporary, poetic and YKONic version to provide a new perspective on the future of our world.

YKON cordially invites you to be one of our next predestined agitators to embark on a three hour journey to the limits of utopia and beyond. Together with our facilitators you’ll be experiencing deep collaboration, mind bending interludes and progressive change in the making.

We’ll be playing during the opening weekend of 37 manifestos in Berlin!

It’s one giant building that would hold 12,000 people. The building is circular with “not a straight piece of glass”–all curved.

Read more:

spaceship

Stewart Brand ( the founder and original editor of the Whole Earth Catalog) early years as an artistmember in a group is an inpiring paralell to YKON (what are we: an artistcollective, art & designband, the UN of utopias (as someone claimed)? Whatever: MOMA’s exhibition gives (according to edge.org) “due credit to Stewart Brand’s early years as member of the USCO (“US” company), an anonymous group of artists whose installations and events combined multiple audio and visual inputs, including film, slides, video, lighting, music, and random sounds. ”

Excellent!

WOW this HUGE ! “Three out of ten – the festival jury acknowledges forward thinking projects and approaches that stand out amongst their peers and stand in for very singular attitudes.”

http://dmy-berlin.com/en/festival/2011-2/award/

Teamed up with Bauhaus Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung, DMY annually highlights the most exceptional festival works. The DMY Award winners are being selected from a group out of ten projects, nominated by the international festival jury amongst all contributions. Since 2010, the jury is composed of three permanent jurors along with two yearly appointed festival jury members: Jurgen Bey (Makkink&Bey), Jerszy Seymour (Jerszy Seymour Design Workshop) and Werner Aisslinger (Studio Aisslinger)…

YKON game has been hard and fun developmentwork from our side, so I am glad it gets highlighted like this!

“These structures were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place (like Tjentište, Kozara and Kadinjača), or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). They were designed by different sculptors (Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, to name a few) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković…), conveying powerful visual impact to show the confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic. In the 1980s, these monuments attracted millions of visitors per year, especially young pioneers for their “patriotic education.” After the Republic dissolved in early 1990s, they were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were forever lost.”

Left alone like that, their aesthetics yield to a rare utopian vision of the former Yugoslavian dictator. Same Tito who retreated to Brioni in the summers. Same Brioni where Ykon will host its next summit and investigate the future..

Here are more examples of these abandoned monuments.

Radiolab is an online radio podcast with monthly dense and astonishing one-hour shows.
The team approaches questions around human concerns in a radiolab-specific manner blending science with cultural studies, personal anecdotes and unusual contributors..

Outcome: surprising!

Well, maybe best described in their own terms: “Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience. Big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow. Bring your curiosity, and we’ll feed it with possibility.”

Some of the previous topics: Stress, Parasites, Symmetry, Gravity, Love, Chance, Cities, Outer Space, Time, Words etc.

Just listen! http://www.radiolab.org/

“The World Peace Game is about learning to live and work comfortably in the unknown.”

In the World peace Game John Hunter lifts up the potential of education and “the teacher” in tamperring with questions like “what kind of world are we making”.

World Peace Game Lecture

Here is someone we should meet with YKON. Especially in terms of experience: John Hunter introduced the first World Peace Game in 1978. Founded in 2010, YKONs Ykon Game was first tested in 2008….
The World Peace Game Foundation also sound interesting. The Foundation seeks to foster the concept of peace not as a utopian dream but as an attainable goal to strive for, and to stimulate the creative development of tools for this effort.

john_hunter_on_the_world_peace_game.html