'The book Facing Forward: Art & Theory from a Future Perspective, springing from the eponymous lecture series, counters the retrospective approach by shifting our attention towards art and theory on the horizon of the future. In particular, the book draws attention to a number of important social and artistic questions that are inextricably bound up in the hybrid "discourse of the future". What will art and art theory bring us in the years and decades to come? How can they change the ways in which we experience and think about the future? What roles do technology, globalization, urban development, science, and politics play in our cultural engagements with futurity? What does it mean (and how does it work) to look forward, to speculate, to extrapolate? Is it possible to develop visions of the future outside and beyond the tired paradigms of utopia and dystopia?' - from the introduction (p.4)