In her work Overcoming the Future Yael Bartana continues her longstanding inquiry into the human capacity for hope –a prophetic emotion based on past experiences and a prime motor of the political imagination. It is based on Bartana’s interest in the 1920s as a time of intense political, ideological, and social upheavals alive with utopian vision and dystopian promise. The artist takes inspiration from the Laban Choreographic Institute that opened in 1927 in the neighboring Grunewald area. The Hungarian choreographer Rudolf von Laban (1879-1958) developed a kinetographic style of expressionistic dance. Following the principles of the “Lebensreform” (life-reform movement), the so-called “Labanotation” combined principles of physical, social, and ritualistic movement –central aspects in Bartana’s oeuvre.