Out of office, not out of work

Like most other companies in the Netherlands, the Ulrike Quade Company is out of office. We are finding each other online, from our living rooms and kitchens and continue our work with the motto: owning the future.

Meanwhile, we see that angst and awe have become guiding lights. They had always been, of course, but in this historical state of exception this fact has been magnificently amplified. They’re clothed as our own thoughts and feelings and whisper that we should act in certain ways.

Around us, we see people respond with nostalgia, with new forms of community and innovation, or just by shutting down for a moment.

For the Ulrike Quade Company we are studying this new time frame that we suddenly ended up in, both with a minute eye for detail and with a bird’s eye view. And actually we feel quite well equipped to do precisely this research. Strange visions of the future and thought experiments are often the base of our work, whether the genre turns out more like magical realism (The Wall/De Wand), science fiction (Technostalgia) or dystopia (The Dreamless/De Droomlozen).

In the meantime, we continue to work on creating images and visions of the future. Because even though we know and recognise the comforting quality of nostalgia, we also see the danger of stasis or worse, reactionary regression. We believe more than ever that we are going to need powerful images that define ourselves and our future, so we can actively contribute to that future from our artistry.

In the immediate future we will give you a look into our introspections. We would like to keep you engaged with our work, even when it’s outside of the spotlights.