Supervisor: PhDr. Vít Havránek, Ph.D.

Drawing on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, this project explores the intersection of worldbuilding and exhibition-making as an emerging trend and potentially a form of transformative practice in contemporary art and curating. It asks about the significance of such practice in the context of technologically accelerated social fragmentation and ecological uncertainty, and situates this inquiry in the Central and Eastern European region.

Rooted in speculative fiction, “worldbuilding” designates the practice of constructing fictional worlds with coherent internal logic. Found across disciplines and industries, it underpins storyworlds in literature and film, (virtual) environments and interactions in (video) games, and drives transmedia franchises and fandoms. In critical design it serves as a projective method for imagining possible or preferable futures, while finding applications in education, advertising, policy and strategic planning, among others.

During the last two decades, the term has seen increased uptake in contemporary art, specifically to describe practices oriented toward imagining and modelling alternative worlds and futures. While worldbuilding has been studied in literary and media fields, scholarship on worldbuilding in contemporary art is sparse, with discussions largely centered around digital technologies such as computer simulations and AI. This project aims to contribute to this emerging body of work through an inquiry into the implications that worldbuilding might have for contemporary art beyond its digital manifestations.

The project focuses on visual art practices and takes worldbuilding as a lens to analyse exhibition environments as speculative worlds. It asks what methodological reorientation such analysis requires, what new understandings of both art and worldbuilding it affords, and what possibilities for curatorial and institutional practice it opens. Finally, moving beyond narrative-centered, authorial, and anthropocentric conceptions of worldbuilding, the project develops a notion of “worldbuilding from a periphery”, proposing an experimental framework for a collaborative, speculative curatorial practice.

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MgA. Tjaša Pogačar Podgornik,

Studio:

Dissertation Thesis: Worldbuilding from a Periphery

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