EVENT LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

This year’s FACING TIME line-up by VIENNA ART WEEK is all about time. Inspiring international guests from the fields of art, business and science will shed light on the topic from different perspectives, and a top-class panel discussion will focus on “20 editions of VIENNA ART WEEK, 20 years of Vienna as a city of art”. This will be followed by a short presentation of the anniversary publication and an aperitif.

4:45-5:15 „A HISTORY OF POSSIBLE FUTURES: WHAT HISTORY TELLS US ABOUT OUR AGE OF DISCORD”

Social and political turbulence in the United States and Western Europe has been rising over the past decade. Peter Turchin’s research, which combines analysis of historical data with the tools of complexity science, has identified the deep structural forces that work to undermine societal stability and resilience to internal and external shocks. Here he looks beneath the surface of day-to-day contentious politics and social unrest, and focuses on the negative social and economic trends that explain our current “Age of Discord.”

Background reading: Turchin, Peter. 2023. End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration (Penguin Random House, New York and London).

Bio:

Peter Turchin is Project Leader at the Complexity Science Hub–Vienna, Research Associate at University of Oxford, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Connecticut. His research interests lie at the intersection of social and cultural evolution, historical macrosociology, economic history, mathematical modeling of long-term social processes, and the construction and analysis of historical databases. A founder of the field of Cliodynamics, his books include End Times (2023) and Ultrasociety (2016).