The question regarding the future as a conclusion from an analysis of the present and how we shape it as individuals and as a society is one of the central challenges of life and thus one of the fundamental themes of modernism. The LED installations by the Japanese-born artist and performer Ei Arakawa (b. 1977) from the Performance People series (2018/19), currently on view at K21, juggle the temporal planes of past, present, and future by translating astrological analyses of certain biographical aspects of historical or living figures into a technoid and performative tableau of LED lights. Where do we stand, and what does the future have in store for us? This question is also evident in works from the early modern period, such as in the painting The Night by Max Beckmann (1884–1950), which was created in 1918/19 and depicts a society of violence, crime, and lack of perspective at the end of the First World War. There is no sign of hope here. Today, we know what came after, and we ask ourselves: Where do we stand? One of many possible answers can be found in a painting by the German artist and enfant terrible Jonathan Meese (b. 1970), which hangs adjacent to Beckmann’s painting at K20 and was created exactly 100 years later. History, identity, failed utopias, and the role and power of art are among the themes that preoccupy him as well.