“No future” was the punk movement’s statement on the subject of the future. Exclaimed in the 1970s, in Germany it echoed until well into the following decade: Cold War, the arms race, the nuclear threat, and much more did not exactly invite young people to beam with joy as they looked into the future. Joseph Beuys described this atmosphere with a slogan that alluded to the American president who had been elected in 1981: “Wir wollen Sonne, statt Reagan, ohne Rüstung leben, ob West, ob Ost, auf Raketen muss Rost.” “No future” sounds like a destructive motto but it released great energy and produced construction things. In that spirit, VIDEO BOX is dedicated to the question of how the video activists of the 1980s imagined the future and what they expected of it.