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“I went through gallery after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher.” The year is 802.700 and the Time Traveller picks his way through the derelict remains of a museum, discovering a past in the future.
“In another place was a vast array of idols – Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think. And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster from South America…” And by writing our vision of a ‘future art’, we too could yield to this irresistible impulse towards a particular predilection, and mark out on the thick dust of the future our present imaginings.
Despite such impulses, I have the desire to stay my hand, and allow for events to unfold, riding the wave of our transmigratory, global and post-postmodern present. To divine a future art from the context of the present, surely, speaks of the present projected onto a future, nothing else. In which case, what we end up ‘visioning’ is a futured now.
In 1982, Joseph Beuys created ‘7000 Oaks’ for documenta VII. This work has endured several documentas from that point onwards. Johannes Stüttgen writes: “The sculpture has the dimensions of an entire city, its construction took more than five years, its maintenance will require a further number of years, even decades, its form will not be completed to perfection – i. e. the trees will not attain full growth – for hundreds of years to come.” Beuys created a work which predestined itself to exist far longer than we will be on earth, for documentas to come, and go. In fact, several lifetimes.
A lifetime, aevum, is needed to witness the work’s completion. In philosophy, aevum speaks of a higher being’s moment; a now that stretches across, above, below and in all directions – unlike what we experience as we careen through our own historically-trapped time. Aevum, a moment, is an eternal now. A continuous moment. This imagistic space, is time no longer understood as continuous and linear, but rather as spatial, for it dives and drops, loops and tangles itself, shooting off to all points and beyond. All possibilities occur in an instant – now. Or forever.
So we speak of a present instead, where past, present and future all collide, hoping to create linear and non-linear trajectories. Art has begun to re-visit former zones of discovery armed with equipment to re-articulate identities and contexts. Platforms on which to negotiate power and position continue to emerge, while the engagement with difference and manufactured sensibilities renew and refresh stale dialogues. Technology provides unexpected sites of negotiation and brokering. This diversity of positions opens art up to almost everything: cultural differences, social responsibilities, global considerations / conditions, identities / authenticities, nomadic work and continual interventions, all swirling in a deliberate blur, creating a present for a future. Art now projects itself onto, and into, spaces and zones of manifold potencies, seeking to establish contacts across the globe, within society, through history. Through the rubble of its own eternal fictions – which in truth is the reality of the world – , life continues to predicate art.
Working on the ruins of the present, art indeed moves on a course of continual self-rediscoveries. While a certain phobia continues to surround such telling paroxysms emanating from discoveries, when one meets something strange, but familiar, across the globe, or even through time – now – we nevertheless remain conditioned by particular experiences and our own sad learning, we draw from the template of our knowledge and seize upon our limitations to understand. The epilogue of H. G. Wells’ book ‘Time Machine’ maps out ‘the future … still black and blank – … a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story.”
Joselina Cruz
Manila, Philippines
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References
Eduardo Cadava: “Lapsus Imaginis: The Image in Ruins”, in ‘October’, Spring 2001
Johannes Stüttgen: “Joseph Beuys’ Sculpture ‘7000 Oaks’ and the documenta”,
documents 3, documenta X, 1997
H. G. Wells: “The Time Machine”, Bantam Classics, 1991
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