The Power of (Un-)Certainty

Time and again, societies pass through uncertain and risky times. Yet uncertainty is also a fundamental, daily experience from which people develop concepts and practices relating to safety, prevention and precaution. Objects of ‘superstition’ bear witness to this for earlier times, while contemporary religious practices make it clear that utility objects are still important in people’s everyday lives. Spanning an arc in time, the new exhibition, part of Worlds, Change, Perspectives, both brings this theme up to the present and links up the individual micro and macro levels.

Questions include: how can safety be guaranteed and risk limited? What makes people feel uncertain? And what is safety? How certain is our own personal future, that of humankind and our planet? Can uncertainties also be productive in the sense of ‘opposing the power of habit’?