CLEA ArtScience and Systems at Play propose an Imaginary Institute - a free-thinking laboratory dedicated to emergent complexity, collective imagination, play, collaboration, and developing collective intelligence protocols for manifesting new ideas...
We don’t know what the Imaginary Institute is - or what will, could, or should, happen within it - because the Imaginary Institute doesn’t exist. Currently, it’s a rumour. Like imagination itself, it lives at the threshold between what is and what could be.
The Imaginary Institute is imagined into existence anew each time by its co-imaginers. What will happen depends on you. Members and guests are invited to collectively envision its protocols, practices, and methods of collective intelligence and collaboration, and then enact them together. It is a space formed by imagination, for imagination.
As such, The Imaginary Institute is a free-thinking laboratory—a meeting place for artists, scientists, philosophers, and other creatives—human and non-human alike— It fosters intradisciplinary exploration, collective imagination, play, and collaboration. At its heart, the Imaginary Institute is an utterly serious, utterly playful, attempt to support the conditions for the manifestation of urgent new ideas, to envision beyond the present and bring forth what does not yet exist.
From January to July 2025, we will run a pilot series of monthly 2-day symposia to collectively imagine the Imaginary Institute together. This series will all take place in Brussels. There is currently no online option, although we are open to exploring this idea.
In order to go deeper into the process of imagining the institute together, and honouring the resulting collaborations, we are especially happy to hear from collaborators who would like to attend multiple symposia in the series. We will also retain some spaces for guests to visit as well.
For the first symposium in February, imaginary protocols will be proposed by members of Center Leo Apostel. Moving forward, we’ll develop a shared system so that future symposia are shaped by proposals for protocols for collective imagination by members and guests of the Imaginary Institute.
Dates:
#1: 14 & 15 February, 2025 - More info here
#2: 21 & 22 March, 2025
#3: 25 & 26 April, 2025
#4: 16 & 17 May, 2025
#5: 27 & 28 June, 2025
Read more here, and apply for an Imaginary membership.