Digital Exhibition
"A Brave New World"
About exhibitions
The “A Brave New World” exhibition is the result of a three-years-long process of art-based research into the four craft ecosystems.
These materials represent both a dissemination output and a tool for our speculative research process.
We used video, field recordings, interviews, text notes and generative AI to create artistic material that would be used to trigger discussions, speculative thinking and brainstorming both within the research group and with the craftmakers.
The process became participatory when we asked the artisans to independently create an artwork in the form of sketches, which were later included in the final edition of the exhibition at the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg (2025). Other stages of sharing and discussing our work with the team of academics, craftmakers, and the public took place at Palazzo Sturm in Bassano del Grappa (2023), Dals Långed, BOFA, and Ca’ Foscari University (2024).
We believe artistic expression can help tackle complex, conflictual topics and overcome cultural and linguistic boundaries, creating a safe space of imagination and speculation.
The exhibitions are dedicated to the memory of Helena Hansson, researcher at the University of Gothenburg and member of HEPHAESTUS. Helena's enthusiasm for craft and co-craft has moved us all.
Discover Digital Exhibition
Postcards from a Brave New World
Brave New World explores an alternative future shaped not by industrial mass production, but by the values and mindset of craftsmanship. The exhibition imagines a society where resources, production, trade, and daily life follow slower, more mindful, and materially aware principles – challenging us to rethink how a different foundation might transform our politics, environment, education, and ways of living.
Developed in dialogue with researchers from the HEPHAESTUS project, the exhibition presents a selection of images that bring this speculative world to life, using artificial creativity to reframe reality through new perspectives and imagined possibilities.
Brave New World Sketches
“Brave New World Sketches” brings together artisans who imagine a world beyond mass production. Building on the project Postcards from a BNW, this edition features speculative sketches, material-reuse ideas, and personal reflections from craft makers whose daily work with materials offers tangible insight and hope for a more sustainable, craft-driven future.