For this first anniversary celebration, the Palais de Tokyo invites artists and the general public to take the opposite view of the expression “It used to be better”, nostalgic for a golden age that has passed, and imagine, for one evening, what the future of the institution could be.

Rather than an anniversary turned towards the past, the event proposes a forward-looking vision, in the past future, and gives the floor to artists, authors, activists, philosophers and researchers to share their vision and projections.

Let’s imagine: it’s 2042. It is already a little too hot. In the respect of sanitary gestures, we are gathered to talk about the last twenty years of what was then called the Palais de Tokyo. About what we have seen and experienced there. About what we have laughed about, what has moved us, delighted us, questioned us, made us angry, missed us, transformed us. Of what made us change our minds. Of what we still live with. Of what redeems us, as Marguerite Duras said last century. Of what we expected from a contemporary art center located in the 16th arrondissement of Paris in the first half of the 21st century.

In an environment textured by the artist Vava Dudu and the musician Tomoko Sauvage, about twenty speakers share in a brief format of about ten minutes, their subjective views on their relationships and their expectations vis-à-vis institutions, especially cultural, their desires and doubts, their optimism or pessimism. So many voices and tones to indulge, together, in a speculative fiction session.