Editorial by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, & Anton Vidokle

8/7/2019 Editorial by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, & Anton Vidokle

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Julieta Aranda, Brian KuanWood, Anton Vidokle

Editorial

Projections of the future that were made in thepast are often striking in their bold na•vete ÐdidnÕt people understand then that futureprojections always end up looking likecaricatures of past concerns? But whereas theseprojections do little to actually activate thefuture they foresaw, they do functionÊasexpressions of pure intention, and in this sensethey are probably not so na•ve. Rather, they

indicate a certain bold willingness on the part ofpeople of a certain time to define inÊexplicitterms exactly how the future should function,and indeed, most of these projected futuresnever come to pass Ð they remain possibilitiesthat the present still fails to activate.ÊSo in thissense, we may not even be talking about thefuture at all here, or rather we are interested inthe future as a stand-in for theÊÒboldÊna•veteÓÊofspeaking about things as they should be.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWe owe the theme of this issue to DieterRoelstraete, whose last contribution on the

recent Òhistoriographic turnÓ in art concluded bylamenting the absence of future modelsavailable to a current moment marked byanÊÒinability to grasp or even look at the present,much less to excavate the future.ÓÊWhen ZdenkaBadovinac offered to respond to the piece, wedecided to invite a number of other contributorsto write on the topic of ÒExcavating the Future.ÓIn response to DieterÕs question, what we find isthat perhaps the absence of future models isascribable not to any hopeless lack of universalsignificance Ð an absence of ideology Ð butrather to the very immanence of the future as akind of offsite space where certain possibilitiescan be explored momentarily before being drawnback into the reality of the present.

***ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn the twentieth century, future projectionswere bound inextricably to those of modernityitself. When modernism took it upon itself toresolve historical inequities, it saw highlyideological forms of central planning as themeans of realizing these resolutions, and in this,Marion von Osten finds a fundamental rupture inmodernityÕs logic. Based on her extensive

research on housing developments and urbanplanning methodologies applied in Europe and inits colonies in the era of decolonization and HighModernism, von Osten encounters a twofacedmodernist discourse whose liberating claimswere so embedded in the logic of centralplanning and control that it has become nearlyimpossible to consider the actual position ofarchitectureÕs inhabitants Ð who invariablypresent other modernities altogether, as theirown methods of building and living returnmodernismÕs planned worlds to the field of daily

life.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ

e-flux journal #6 Ñ may 2009 Ê Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan

Wood, Anton Vidokle

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ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIf the future will indeed be jerry-rigged byits inhabitants, Gean Moreno and Ernesto Orozaalready find it at work in immigrantneighborhoods such as MiamiÕs Little Haiti,where improvised building practices form anarchitecture of necessity in which modernismÕsteleology is Òreplaced with radical pragmatics.ÓWhen one approaches a stolen milk cratebecoming a table for selling pirated DVDs as a

crucial part of the urban landscape rather thanan isolated instance, the urban landscape istransformed from a planned grid to a collectionof raw materials and potentialities. To seepromiscuous improvisation and hybridization asmore emblematic of urban life than civicinstitutions and planning, one can begin toimagine how Òentirely new cities emerge withinthe shells of buildings that speak to theconcerns of another time.ÓÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÒWe are moving toward the end of theexploitation of nature, of work, of trade, of

predation, of separation from the self, ofsacrifice, of guilt, of the forsaking of happiness,of the fetishizing of money, of power, ofhierarchy, of contempt for and fear of women, ofthe misleading of children, of intellectualdominion, of military and police despotism, ofreligions, of ideologies, of repression and thedeadly resolutions of psychic tensions,Ó claimsRaoul Vaneigem in Hans Ulrich ObristÕsconversation with the Belgian writer,philosopher, and former member of theSituationist International. Vaneigem reminds usof a moment when (or a place where) it seemedas if we brushed up against the future wewanted, or at least the conditions for imaginingideal scenarios for living.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAnd then there are also ideal scenarios fornot dying. Michael Baers visits Bucharest for hislatest installment, visiting Alexandra Croitoruand Stefan Tiron, who are part of a collectiveresearching survival techniques for a Òglobalcataclysm in the 2nd world context.Ó In their ownkind of architecture-in-waiting, Croitoru andTiron approach the city of Bucharest as acollection of movable parts waiting to be

repurposed Ð a typical Orthodox church, mall, orcrypt are considered for their structural benefitsfor a post-apocalyptic population.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMariana Silva and Pedro Neves MarquesÕÒThe Escape RouteÕs DesignÓ stages a dialoguebetween the incomplete projects in IlyaKabakov's Palace of Projects and the series ofattempts at crossing the Berlin Wall from East toWest from the 60s until the mid 80s. Taking theshape of a case study that reads as an obliquecomparison between artistic proposals andhistorical events, the text is an ambitious

attempt at positioning a possibility for actualutopian projects to emerge from a space

between the indeterminacy of the artisticproposal and the highly determined politicalaction Ð a space that forms the escape routethat Silva and Marques wish to identify. Firstpresented in Berlin last June in the form of abilingual Portuguese/English book edited anddesigned by the artists, the launch of the bookwas accompanied by a three-day presentationbased loosely around concepts explored in the

book, which concluded when the last bookletwas given away.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊZdenka Badovinac looks at how EasternEuropean artists have used strategies ofrepetition and borrowing as a means ofresponding to the real. As Laibach and NSK,Brecht, or Walter Benjamin have shown,repetition could be deployed as a means ofabsorbing a logic of redundancy and enclosure inorder to re-enunciate it on their own terms. AsBadovinac states about the artist group JanezJanša, ÒThey demonstrated that forms defined

by repeatability are an essential condition of ourlife and work, and that what is increasinglyimportant is the difference beyond difference:new forms of citizenship that transcend politicaland formal identity.ÓÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFinally, in Dieter RoelstraeteÕs continuationof his essay ÒThe Way of the Shovel: On theArcheological Imaginary in ArtÓ from issue #4,he calls for a response to the melancholicfascination with history in the form of anassertive claim to the present. For Roelstraete,if art is to have any generative capacity worthmentioning, it must define a relationship to itspresent. And this definition can be quite literal,even taking the form of new isms andmovements, with all their universalist claims.However these claims might overdeterminecontemporary production, the willingness toframe the circumstances surrounding art moreimportantly signifies a willingness to engage thereality of the present, as well as the significanceof its place in future histories.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ


Wood, Anton Vidokle

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Special thanks to Eric Angl•s,Raoul Vaneigem, Phillip StephenTwilley, Jeff Ramsey, FrancescaGrassi, Shahira Issa.


Wood, Anton Vidokle

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08.20.10 / 17:48:04 UTC

Editorial by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, & Anton Vidokle

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