In July 2019, we organised a meeting at the Verbeke Art Foundation. It was a gathering of people—artists, designers, architects, researchers—where we would discuss, imagine and prefigure a society of total automation. The Last Meeting became a meta-meeting—a meeting in which we considered the possibility of never again holding another meeting.

When the totality of humanity—with all its irregularities and oddities—is transformed into data, a new modus operandi of automation arises: customs and cultural habits become calculable standards; the desires of the individual shift into building blocks for citizens of the future; the randomness of human interaction and societal dynamics converts into a prewritten script. When the input we give the network turns into a compulsory feedback loop, the world becomes a digital commonwealth run by data-driven balancing protocols.

What would the position of the artist in society be beyond the last meeting? This post-humanist speculation established a critical outline to carefully study and embody the future of artistic practice while simultaneously reflecting on the current state of affairs. We found ourselves in a meta-entanglement between theory and practice—an ideal place for communal contemplation. From thereon, tensions between dialectics of ""free-time"" and ""productive time"" rendered visions of the automated management of social life.

To deepen and refine this experience, we propose a second last meeting. In the summer of 2020, a gathering will take place in the monastery of the Trappistines of Brecht, a monastic order of the most strict observance. This time-old religious community will serve as a backdrop for discussions and reflections on the fundaments of the social organisation of daily life as an artistic practice and research.

For SAR 2020, we want to present our insights gathered during the first meeting, and share our plans for the next. We will, again, ask ourselves the question: what does it mean to meet?