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Designing Tomorrow, a Utopia project, 2016, Image: Hemda Federman

Why Utopia?

“Today, science fiction is the most important artistic genre”, said recently historian Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-selling books Sapiens and Homo Deus, to Wired magazine. Harari joins a long list of leaders and thinkers that praise science fiction and engage in creative speculation, such as Laurie Anderson and David Bowie, Stephen Colbert and Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, Naomi Klein, Paul Krugman, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Theodor Herzl, Winston Churchill and Barack Obama.

Our mission at Utopia is to celebrate science fiction, support and promote speculative thought and creativity and ignite imagination – artistic, scientific, social and political.

By speculating about possible futures and alternative worlds we find ourselves critically thinking, questioning and contesting the basic structures of society and reality. Science fiction boldly goes where no one has gone before, seeks out frontiers, physical and perceptive, scientific and social, exploring the unknown as well as the un-spoken and taboo.

This is what we strive to do and support through our projects at Utopia.

Creators of science fiction imagine the unimaginable and explore the impossible. Science fiction is the spearhead of creativity. In literature, film, design and art, science fiction has given inspiration to marvelous journeys through space and has invented cyberspace, has thought-up the Robot, Big Brother, The computer virus, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and the technological singularity.

The “what if” question, the heart of speculative creativity, seems simplistic and naïve, deceptively so, as it is subversive and radical, a constant reminder that the world is not all that it is, but all that we can imagine it to be.

In a world completely reliant on science, overflowing with technology and crying out for vision, the role of speculation is ever more important. At our doorstep are critical human dilemmas – stemming from the world of scientific exploration and technological innovation, as well as the social realities all around us – and they require brave new perspectives. The role of speculative thought and creativity, of science fiction, has never been more important, the need for imagination, ever more urgent.

At Utopia we initiate cultural, artistic and social projects that celebrate creativity and innovation, strengthen the values of scientific literacy and critical thought, generate a discussion about science, technology, society and the future, and above all – raise the flag of untethered imagination.

Utopia Board & Association Members