WORKSHOP: PAST WORDS /FUTURE WORDS with Prem Krishnamurthy

In an age of AI and systems collapse / rebirth, language’s future transformations appear unknowable. So please join us in moving between multiple modes—from speaking to listening, reading to writing, teaching to learning (+ dancing to karaoke!)—to speculate upon what Is right now and what Is still yet to come.

It’s impossible to estimate how many words today’s humans generate minute-by-minute—and even harder to calculate which ones might still survive tomorrow. Past Words / Future Words is Prem Krishnamurthy’s newest experimental format for gathering: a dynamic prototype of a participatory performance plus speculative reading × writing workshop.

Our unconventional event starts from Prem’s recent anthology, Past Words (König, 2024), which collects his reflections on art, exhibitions, design, time, and the process of writing over fifteen years, alongside two curatorial experiments that play with time. From there, Past Words / Future Words swerves, drilling deep into sunsilencing, v.1.0.0, Prem’s science-fiction-novel-in-the-making. Together, we’ll “open up the hood” of his novel writing methods, offering participants a chance to contribute to the forthcoming book through their questions and queries.

explores how art and design can be agents of transformation for individuals, communities, and institutions. This manifests itself across events, exhibitions, images, performances, publications, systems, talks, texts, and workshops (+ karaoke!). He received the Cooper Hewitt’s National Design Award for Communications Design in 2015, and Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies acquired his professional papers in 2019. In addition to directing design studios, establishing art institutions, organizing large-scale exhibitions, and teaching widely, he has also authored several books. These include P!DF (2017–2020), On Letters (2022), and Past Words (2024), an anthology of his writing and experimental curatorial projects. He currently runs Department of Transformation, an artist-organized group that prototypes new modes of togetherness, learning, and collective healing.

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