GRAZ.- For 2025, the Kunsthaus Graz has dedicated its annual programme to the central theme of power relations. Throughout the year, exhibitions will explore how power is distributed, maintained and resisted—addressing structural violence, control and asymmetry, alongside narratives of emancipation and resilience. Leaning into the second half of the year—and a season in which darkness gradually overtakes light—the programme confronts the current human condition, shaped by growing insecurity, instability and fear.

In her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote: “The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.” This seems to encapsulate perfectly the conditions in which we now live. Although uncertainty has always been part of our reality, it seems more present than ever. Today, global precarity is fuelled by the uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources and people; we face environmental collapse, war, political instability and mass displacement. These are not merely crises but signs of a profound shift—a moment when the foundations of the world as we know it seem to be crumbling.

At the heart of this unsettled reality lie the complex and often invisible workings of power relations and power asymmetries that shape global inequalities, influence access to resources and determine whose lives are valued—or not. Power is not a fixed force, and not to be possessed, but an ever-shifting presence embedded within political structures, economic systems and social relations. It amplifies uncertainty by maintaining systemic imbalances even as it is challenged by resistance and transformation. Understanding this dynamic is crucial to grasping how uncertainty is both produced and contested in our times.

This uncertainty at the core of our present time gives rise to an ambivalence that resonates in the exhibition Unseen Futures to Come. Fall and reflects the simultaneous presence of light and dark within the human condition. We are capable of immense love and care, yet also cruelty and destruction. This duality is not easy to grasp because it is so deeply woven into our everyday experience—something we live through without distance. It now seems that this ambivalence has taken a turn, and perhaps we are witnessing humanity’s downfall. And yet we may still learn from past patterns: the sense of an ending often precedes major paradigm shifts, shifts inscribed not only in modes of production but also in entire cultural and value systems. Only now, unlike before, has human existence been so profoundly threatened.

The exhibition explores this fragile and shifting ground through twelve artistic positions. One of the central works is a library called Fall. A Library of Twilight Worlds, conceptualised by philosopher Federico Campagna. This collection of 250 theoretical and philosophical books is structured around the metaphor of the seasons, which symbolise our approach to and perception of the world. Campagna describes the present moment as:

“The crisis of reality that we witness today shouldn’t be interpreted as the disquieting but fleeting passage between two different ages or reality­-systems. On the contrary, it is in itself the symptom of an age that has come to stay, and that has made of the collapse of the background onto the stage the mark of its reign.” —Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality (2018), p. 18

Within this framework, autumn/fall is the season in which certainty dissolves, knowledge is questioned, and our fear of the unknown intensifies. Here, rational thought meets alternative worldviews, highlighting the complex interplay between reason and uncertainty in times of upheaval.

In addition to the library, the exhibition features works by Dana Awartani, Christoph Grill, Adelita Husni Bey, Marija Marković, Vladimir Nikolić, Yhonnie Scarce, Andrej Škufca, Jože Tisnikar, Sophie Utikal, Bill Viola and zweintopf. Rather than offering answers, their works invite us to reflect and encourage us to stay with the questions that define our era. Within the tension of Fall, as the old yields to the unknown, we are reminded that darkness is never final. Even as the world wavers, the possibility of light endures.